How Many Calories In A Cheeseburger?

Stop for a minute and think about your favorite cookout food. Is it juicy and delicious? Perfectly smoky and slightly charred? Topped with gooey, melted cheese? It's hard to beat the taste of a good old-fashioned cheeseburger — but eat too many and the calories can really add up.

There are a lot of factors that go into determining the number of calories in your cheeseburger (how lean your ground beef is, whether you top your burger with anything, and what kind of bread you're serving it on, to name a few). Since each cheeseburger is unique (and quarter-pound cheeseburgers range anywhere from 400 to 700 calories), we created a quick cheat sheet (based on average calorie counts for some of the higher-calorie components of your burger) to help you determine how yours stacks up.

Quarter pound all-beef patty (90% lean)

260 calories

Store-bought hamburger bun

120 calories

1 slice of American cheese

60 calories

1 1-ounce slice of Cheddar cheese

113 calories

1 1-ounce slice of Swiss cheese

106 calories

1 tablespoons of ketchup

15 calories

1 tablespoon of mayonnaise

90 calories

That means that a quarter-pound (90 percent lean) cheeseburger served on a store-bought bun and topped with one slice of American cheese and a tablespoon of ketchup weighs in at 455 calories.
 

Kristie Collado is The Daily Meal's Cook Editor. Follow her on Twitter @KColladoCook.