You made the switch from smoking to vaping because you’re a health-conscious person who cares about what you put into your body. With that in mind, it’s not surprising that your concern would extend beyond what you inhale and would also encompass the things that you eat and drink. It might also interest you to know whether those things overlap at all. Is it possible to gain weight from vaping? How many calories are in a vape, anyway?
We’re going to start you out with some great news: A vape contains negligible calories, and there’s basically no reason to worry about this anyway because you can’t absorb calories through your lungs. So, as you’re puffing on the Geek Bar Pulse or another popular vape, you can do it in peace because you’re not going to gain weight from it.
The full story is actually quite interesting, though – and if you want it, you’ll have to continue reading.
To Know How Many Calories Are in a in a Vape, You Need to Know Its Ingredients
Let’s start with some basics. What’s actually in a vape? A typical modern vape juice contains five ingredients. They are:
- Vegetable glycerin (VG)
- Propylene glycol (PG)
- Natural and artificial flavors
- Sucralose
- Nicotine
In order to calculate how many calories are in a vape, we’ll need to break those ingredients down individually. That’s what we’ll do next.
How Many Calories Are in VG and PG?
Vegetable glycerin and propylene glycol contain approximately 4 calories per ml.
VG and PG are used in such miniscule amounts in food that you need to go straight to the chemical manufacturers to find out how many calories they contain. Doing that, here’s what we find:
- According to Dow Chemical, propylene glycol contains 400 calories per 100 grams. Since one milliliter equals one gram, PG contains 4 calories per ml.
- According to Evolution Chemicals, vegetable glycerin contains 399 calories per 100 grams. That’s 3.99 calories per ml, which is essentially the same as 4 calories for our purpose.
How Many Calories Are in Vape Juice Flavors?
Vape juice flavors contain approximately 4 calories per ml.
The flavors that are used in e-liquid are so potent that they need to be mixed with carrier liquids. When it comes to the calories in vape juice flavors, it’s really the carriers that concern us because the flavors themselves are basically inconsequential. What’s really convenient is that two of the three possible carriers are already in most vape juice.
- A vape juice flavor can use PG as a carrier. In that case, its caloric content is about 4 calories per ml.
- A vape juice flavor can use VG as a carrier. In that case, its caloric content is about 4 calories per ml.
- A vape juice can use pure grain alcohol as a carrier. In that case, its caloric content is about 7 calories per ml.
The vast majority of e-liquid flavors use PG and VG as carriers. Alcohol-based flavors were sometimes used in the past because some people found that the alcohol enhanced throat hit. They’re rare these days, though, because modern nicotine salt e-liquid packs a good punch on its own and doesn’t need any enhancements.
It’s worthwhile to note that oil-based flavors also exist for food use. Because oil isn’t safe to inhale, though, those flavors aren’t used in vape juice.
How Many Calories Are in Nicotine?
Nicotine contains about a quarter of a calorie per gram.
Here’s where things get a little complicated. Because nicotine isn’t a food, no one bothers to calculate its calories. Since you don’t eat nicotine, what’s the point? We can come up with an extremely rough estimate, though, by considering the nicotine content of a popular food: eggplant. Did you know that eggplant contains nicotine? That’s right. In fact, trace amounts of nicotine are in many of the other foods that you eat, such as tomatoes and potatoes.
So, how much nicotine are we talking about?
- There are about 100 nanograms of nicotine in a gram of eggplant.
- One gram is 1,000,000,000 nanograms, so nicotine is about one ten millionth of what’s in an eggplant by weight.
- Eggplant contains about a quarter of a calorie per gram.
- Based on that logic, one gram of eggplant contains .000000025 calories in its 100 nanograms of nicotine.
- Multiply that by 10 million, and we get a quarter of a calorie in one gram of nicotine.
Remember, however, that nicotine isn’t measured in grams – it’s measured in milligrams. Therefore, it is essentially calorie free in the amounts that you would consume when vaping.
How Many Calories Are in Sucralose?
This one is easy. Sucralose contains about 3.3 calories per gram.
Putting It All Together: How Many Calories Are in a Vape?
Now, it’s time to put everything we’ve learned together. The vape juice in a typical disposable vape might contain somewhere in the range of:
- 65% VG and PG. These contain about 4 calories per ml.
- 20% flavors. These contain about 4 calories per ml.
- 10% sucralose. This contains about 3.3 calories per ml.
- 5% nicotine. This is essentially calorie free.
Considering the variability in sweetness between different vape juice brands, you can safely conclude that vape juice contains about 3-4 calories per ml. We’ll round it up to 4 calories to make our calculations easier.
So, how many calories are in a popular vape like the Geek Bar Pulse? This well-known device contains 16 ml of vape juice, so you can conclude that it has about 64 calories at the most.
Here’s the Great News About the Calories in a Vape
Although it’s fun and informative to calculate the number of calories in a vape, none of it actually matters because you aren’t going to use anywhere near 16 ml of vape juice in a day. At the most, you’ll probably use 1-2 ml. That means you’re consuming something like 8 calories from vaping per day as an absolute maximum.
Here’s the other great thing: Although the calories in a vape are negligible to begin with, you can’t actually absorb those calories through your lungs. In order to absorb calories, they have to be processed by your digestive system. Aside from the trace droplets of vape juice that might stick to the inside of your mouth, you’re not going to ingest any e-liquid when you vape. Therefore, vapes essentially have no calories.
Can Vaping Make You Gain Weight?
No. As we’ve explained in this article, vape juice is essentially calorie free in the amounts that you would realistically consume by vaping. That would be the case even if you absorbed every single calorie in the e-liquid, which is impossible because you can’t absorb calories through your lungs.
Can Vaping Make You Lose Weight?
Although you won’t gain weight from vaping, you also shouldn’t think of it as a weight loss tool unless you modify your daily caloric consumption in some other way. Let’s suppose, for instance, that you enjoy using sweet vapes because you find that they help to reduce your cravings for sweet snacks. If you end up consuming fewer snacks from that – and you don’t replace those calories in some other way – then you are likely to lose weight. Otherwise, though, you won’t lose weight by vaping.