cream cheese nutrition facts calories and health benefits

Regular Variety

You probably already know that if you’re go-to Philly cream cheese is the regular variety, you’re getting way more calories than any other type. One tablespoon of regular cream cheese has 50 calories. Of that amount, 45 calories come from the 5 grams of fat. The remaining 5 calories come from a small amount of protein and carbohydrates.

Whipped Up

The whipped variety isn’t lower in fat; rather, it’s just lighter and fluffier, so you don’t need to use as much. Because it’s whipped up, a 1-tablespoon serving gives you just 34 calories – that’s more than a 30 percent reduction over the regular variety. You’ll get 3.4 grams of fat, which amounts to nearly 31 calories from fat, while the remaining 3 calories stem from about half a gram of protein and a half a gram of carbs.

Fat-Free Philly

If you’re watching your diet, you’ll definitely want to select fat-free Philly cream cheese. You’ll get fewer than 20 calories per tablespoon from this variety. Fat-free cream cheese has less than 0.2 gram of fat, amounting to roughly 1.6 calories from fat. The same serving has 2.8 grams of protein, or 11.3 calories from protein. Lastly, carbs account for 5.5 calories from the 1.4 grams of carbs.