Calories in Coconut: Fresh Kernel, Copra and Grated

By NYUS Inc. · Published 27 October 2026

Fresh coconut in the chutney, grated coconut on the sabzi, a piece of copra after a meal, dry coconut in a laddu: coconut is in so many Indian dishes that it is rarely counted on its own. The two forms are not the same food, because one has most of its water and the other has almost none. This guide gives the calories, protein, fat and fibre per 100 g for both from the ICMR-NIN Indian Food Composition Tables 2017 (IFCT 2017), then turns them into a tablespoon, a small piece and a katori using weights that are ours.

The short answer

By IFCT 2017, fresh coconut kernel (H007) has 409 kcal per 100 g and dry coconut kernel (H006, copra) has 624 kcal. By our arithmetic, a tablespoon of grated fresh coconut (8 g, our weight) is about 33 kcal, a small piece of 15 g is about 61 kcal, and a 10 g piece of copra is about 62 kcal. Our reading: a piece of copra and a bigger piece of fresh coconut cost about the same, so the form matters less than the weight you eat.

Calories, protein, fat and fibre per 100 g

Each row is one IFCT 2017 Table 1 row, per 100 g edible portion as listed in the book, mean values as printed. Energy is the book's kilojoules divided by 4.184, to the nearest kcal. Fibre is total dietary fibre. Both rows were measured in 6 regions and sit on PDF page 55. The coconut kernel itself is meant here, not the water or the oil.

Per spoon, piece and katori

The weights are ours, not from IFCT: a heaped tablespoon of grated fresh coconut is about 8 g, a small piece (a tukda of about 3 cm by 3 cm by 1 cm) is about 15 g, a small katori of grated is about 30 g, a tablespoon of grated copra is about 6 g, a small piece of copra is about 10 g. Each figure is the per-100 g value times the grams, divided by 100, rounded to the nearest kcal and 0.1 g.

What stands out in the numbers

• Copra holds about 1.5 times the calories of fresh coconut per 100 g (624 against 409 kcal). Table 1 lists water at 3.97 g per 100 g for copra and 36.14 g for fresh, so most of the gap is water.
• Most of the energy is fat in both forms: 63.26 g per 100 g in copra and 41.38 g in fresh coconut. Protein is 7.27 g and 3.84 g.
• Fibre is high: 15.88 g per 100 g in copra and 10.42 g in fresh, about 1.6 g and 1.0 g in a 10 g piece by our weights.
• A heaped tablespoon of grated fresh coconut is about 33 kcal by our weight. Two spoons in a sabzi and two in the chutney are about 130 kcal before any oil. That is our arithmetic, and it is the part people tend to miss.

How to log it so the numbers hold

• Weigh your usual amount once. Grated coconut packs loosely or tightly, so a spoon can differ a lot from ours; weigh it and scale the tables.
• Count it in the dish. Coconut ground into a gravy or chutney still counts; see the plate method in our hand-portion guide if you cannot weigh.
• This page is the kernel only. For coconut water see our coconut water guide, and for coconut oil see our cooking oil fatty acids guide.
• Compare with nuts and seeds. Our dry fruits and nuts chart and our seeds guide use the same sums for almonds, walnuts, peanuts and six seeds.

Where NYUS fits (our app)

We make NYUS, so read this as ours. NYUS is an AI fitness and nutrition coach in early access on Android, with no ads and no data selling. You log foods yourself by searching 8,900+ Indian and global foods or by barcode, and a weekly check-in adjusts your calories, macros and step goal once enough is logged. Barcode coverage of Indian packaged foods is not complete, so search by name when a scan finds nothing.

What this page leaves out

• A calorie or protein target: we have not looked up one for any person, so we give none.
• Coconut milk, coconut cream, desiccated or sweetened coconut and any laddu, barfi or chutney: no IFCT row we could use. Coconut water and coconut oil are covered in the guides linked above.
• Anything about weight, health or what coconut does to your body: the page adds up food data and makes no claim about it. If you have a medical condition, ask your doctor or dietitian.

Sources

• ICMR-NIN, Indian Food Composition Tables 2017 (IFCT 2017). Table 1, protein, fat, total dietary fibre, water and energy per 100 g edible portion, read from the PDF on 27 Oct 2026: H006 (coconut, kernel, dry, 6 regions) and H007 (coconut, kernel, fresh, 6 regions), both on PDF page 55. Energy converted from kJ at 4.184 kJ per kcal (H007 1711 kJ = 409 kcal, H006 2611 kJ = 624 kcal).
• nyus.in, the NYUS landing page, read on 27 Oct 2026 for the app statements in the NYUS section and the CTA.

The serving weights (8 g, 15 g, 30 g, 6 g, 10 g, 16 g, 20 g), the sums, the rounding and every sentence starting "Our reading" are NYUS's own arithmetic or opinion, not from a study. "Copra" and "tukda" are our names for the dry kernel row and the small piece.

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