Labneh calories: protein, fat and carbs per 100 g

Labneh is yoghurt strained of much of its whey until it is thick enough to spread, eaten at breakfast or on a mezze table and scooped up with bread, sometimes under olive oil or za'atar. With so much liquid gone it is denser than yoghurt, and the tables bear that out: beside the row they label Yoghurt, the labneh row holds clearly less water and about four times the protein and the fat per 100 g. They are separate entries, not one batch before and after straining, so read the gap as a pattern.

None of that makes this row a figure for its relatives. Laban, the cultured milk drink, has no usable analysis in these tables and is on the food calories page list of foods without data. Yoghurt is a different food too; the labneh row says nothing about it.

A labneh pastry is a third food. Its row under bread and bakery describes the whole pastry, dough included, and carbohydrate is its largest nutrient; neither food's figures stand in for the other's.

Most of labneh's weight is water, which the tables also print. Of what remains, protein is the largest figure at 12.9 g per 100 g, with fat a little behind at 10.8 g. Carbohydrate is almost absent at 1 g, and fibre is printed as 0, as you would expect of a food made from milk.

The energy follows a different order. A gram of fat carries more than twice the energy of a gram of protein, so the smaller fat figure still supplies more of labneh's 154 kcal than the protein does. For searches about labneh calories and protein, that is the plain answer: real protein, with almost as much fat by weight.

For macro tracking, labneh counts toward fat and protein, hardly at all toward carbohydrate. The macro calculator sets daily targets for all three, and the protein calculator gives a protein range for your weight and goal.

The row comes from section 1 of the Bahrain tables, foods as eaten in Bahrain. The tables say some section 1 values were taken from the tables of countries Bahrain imports food from, without marking which rows, so this may be a borrowed value rather than a Bahraini laboratory result. It names no brand, maker, type of milk or fat level.

Labneh is sold full-fat and low-fat, looser and firmer, and under regional names; the source separates none of them, and this page does not estimate how they differ. A packaged labneh's label describes that tub more closely than a table row can.

• Low-fat or light labneh: not split from full-fat in the source, so no separate figure.
• Labneh balls, rolled from a firmer labneh and sometimes kept in olive oil: not analysed, and the oil is a separate food.
• Greek yoghurt: strained too, but not analysed in these tables, so not set against labneh here.

Searches ask for labneh calories per tablespoon, per two tablespoons and per cup. None of those measures has a published weight, and a spoon is a poor gauge for a spread: a heaped spoon of thick labneh can hold much more than a level spoon of a softer one. Grams are what work.

1. Set your plate on a kitchen scale, zero it and add the labneh, or weigh the tub before and after breakfast. Using the same spoon every day? Weigh one typical spoonful once and keep the number.
2. In the food calorie calculator, type Labneh. Two rows come up: pick Labneh, not Labneh pastry, and enter your grams.
3. Count olive oil, za'atar, olives and bread separately. The same tables list olive oil as almost pure fat, with several times labneh's energy per 100 g.

The calorie calculator estimates the daily total that breakfast is part of.

At breakfast labneh and bread go together, and their rows complement each other. Arabic bread is mostly carbohydrate with little fat; labneh has more protein per 100 g than khubz, far more fat and almost no carbohydrate. The bread carries more energy per 100 g, so count it as carefully as the labneh.

Halloumi, the other dairy food in this reference with its own page, is a much denser food: the tables give it more than twice labneh's energy per 100 g and far more fat. The guide to macros and nutrition explains how protein, fat and carbohydrate fit together across a day.

This page reports one published analysis as general information, not dietetic advice. If you manage a medical condition, a food allergy or a prescribed diet, settle what you eat with a doctor or a registered dietitian.