Halloumi calories: protein, fat and carbs per 100 g

Halloumi, also spelled haloumi, is a firm white cheese kept in brine, with a squeaky bite and an unusual trait for a cheese: it keeps its shape in a hot pan instead of melting. It is eaten in slices with bread and olives, grilled or fried until golden, and tucked into sandwiches.

The Bahrain tables print one row for it, "Cheese, haloom", in the dairy group of section 1, foods as eaten in Bahrain. By the tables' own account, some section 1 values came from the tables of countries supplying Bahrain's imports, unmarked by row, so read the figure as a reference value, not a test of your pack.

The row names no brand or milk, is not labelled full-fat or light, and gives no cooking method. Its fibre cell holds a printed symbol rather than a figure, hence "not published" in the table above.

Fat is the largest figure in the row, and since each gram of fat holds over twice the energy of a gram of protein or carbohydrate, most of halloumi's 363 kcal comes from its 29.4 g of fat. Protein, at 16.4 g, supplies a smaller share.

Water makes up under half of the cheese, though by the tables' figures it is still its biggest component. Pressing whey from the curd leaves less water, and more fat and protein, than in soft dairy. Labneh, a strained yoghurt with far more water, has less than half of halloumi's energy and fat per 100 g, and less protein.

The carbohydrate figure deserves a second look: at 8.2 g per 100 g, it is higher than in any other cheese row in the dairy group. The tables give no reason, and a possibly borrowed value cannot be traced from here. If your pack's label differs, go by the label for that cheese.

Searches ask how halloumi compares with cheddar. Two dairy rows name cheddar, one labelled cheddar and sliced cheese, one a processed cheddar spread; per 100 g, both have less energy, fat and carbohydrate than halloumi, and more protein. No cheese row in the group, from feta to cream cheese, carries more energy than halloumi.

Chicken is a different kind of food. Every chicken meat row in the meat and poultry group of section 1, raw, boiled, fried, roasted, white or red, has more protein than halloumi with less energy and less fat per 100 g; halloumi carries more fat than protein. Ready-to-eat grilled chicken has its own rows on the tikka page. All of these rows share the section 1 caveat, so read them as a broad ranking, not a verdict on brands.

Halloumi is grilled and fried as well as eaten as it comes, but the tables analysed no grilled, fried, light or reduced-fat halloumi, so none of those gets a figure here. What cooking can and cannot change, in general terms:

• Grilling or dry-frying drives off water and may let a little fat run out: the slice weighs less, and its figures per 100 g are no longer this row's.
• Frying in oil or butter adds fat the row does not contain. Count the oil or butter as a food of its own.
• Heat itself adds no protein or energy, and none of these changes was measured here.

For light halloumi, the pack label is the only source. Fat supplies most of the energy, so a lower-fat version would be expected to carry less, but by how much depends on the product, and this page does not guess. Branded packs and restaurant dishes are separate foods too. Foods with no usable analysis are listed on the food calories page.

Searches ask for halloumi per slice and per block. Slices are cut to no fixed thickness and packs vary in size, so there is no per-slice or per-block figure here. A sealed block is the easy case: its net weight is printed on the pack.

1. Weigh the slices before cooking, since nothing in the row says the analysed cheese was cooked, or take a whole block's net weight from the pack.
2. In the food calorie calculator, type Halloumi, choose the row (the same record as the table above) and enter the grams.
3. Add the rest of the plate separately: bread, oil, olives, tomato.

With Arabic bread, a breakfast plate or home-made sandwich is two entries: cheese against this row, bread against a bread row. No halloumi sandwich or pastry was analysed under that name, and cheese sambosa, a pastry with a cheese filling, is a different food with rows of its own.

Most of halloumi's energy is fat, so count it mainly against the fat share of your day: the calorie calculator estimates a daily target and the macro calculator divides it into protein, carbohydrate and fat.

This page does not cover salt; halloumi is brined, so check the pack label if salt matters to you. These figures are general food information, not dietetic advice. If a medical condition shapes what you eat, your doctor or a registered dietitian is the person to fit halloumi into it.