Healthy Eating in Los Angeles: Calories and Protein in Tacos, Burritos, Pho and More

What does healthy eating look like in Los Angeles?

Healthy eating in Los Angeles means eating the city's own food with a little arithmetic, not swapping it for salads. LA is built on the cooking of the communities that settled here. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America calls it the country's preeminent city for regional Mexican food. The city has officially named neighborhoods for the cuisines and people that made them, and most Angelenos eat across several of them in a normal week.

• Mexican and Central American: taco trucks and taquerias citywide, from Boyle Heights to the Valley, and the El Salvador Corridor in Pico-Union (named in August 2012) for pupusas.
• Korean: Koreatown, officially recognized in 2008, for barbecue, soups and bibimbap. The Kogi truck, which put bulgogi in tacos, started on November 19, 2008.
• Thai: Thai Town in East Hollywood, designated on October 27, 1999.
• Japanese: Little Tokyo (1995) and Sawtelle Japantown on the Westside (2015).
• Armenian and Middle Eastern: Little Armenia in East Hollywood (October 6, 2000), and Glendale, which has one of the highest concentrations of Armenian restaurants in the country.
• Filipino, Ethiopian and Chinese: Historic Filipinotown (2002), Little Ethiopia (2002) and Chinatown (1938).
• Food halls: Grand Central Market at 317 S Broadway in Downtown LA has fed the city since October 1917, with dozens of vendors under one roof.

Los Angeles also invented, or claims, a fair share of American fast food. The cheeseburger, the chili burger, the California roll, the Korean taco and the French dip (Philippe's and Cole's both claim it) are all credited to LA, and McDonald's, Taco Bell, Panda Express and In-N-Out all started in the region. That's the food environment you're training in. The numbers below show where the calories are.

How many calories are in a taco, a burrito and a pupusa?

A Los Angeles street taco is one of the leaner things you can buy, and a large burrito is one of the heaviest. These figures come from USDA's FNDDS 2021–2023 database, which gives average values for foods as Americans eat them. A taqueria's own tacos will differ with the cut of meat, the oil and how heavy the hand is with cheese.

Two lessons come straight out of that table. The chicken burrito bowl gives you more protein than the large chicken burrito for 233 fewer calories, because the bowl drops the flour tortilla. And three chicken tacos (about 665 calories and 51 g protein by these figures) give you more protein than a large beef burrito for fewer calories. If the truck near you sells tacos by the piece, ordering three is a simple portion rule.

How do you order at an LA taco truck when you're trying to lose fat?

You order at a Los Angeles taco truck for fat loss by choosing the meat and the tortilla, and keeping the extras small. The rest can stay as it is.

1. Pick chicken or grilled meat. In the USDA figures, the chicken taco has the most protein per calorie of the three tacos, 17.0 g for 222.
2. Stay with corn. In USDA's data a medium corn taco shell is 133 calories against 230 for a medium flour one, so corn is the lighter wrap.
3. Load the salsa, onion, cilantro and radish. They add flavor for almost nothing.
4. Count the cheese, crema and guacamole. One 70 g cup of guacamole is 109 calories with barely any protein.
5. Watch the drink. A cup of horchata is 218 calories, roughly a whole taco's worth.
6. Decide on the number before you order. Three tacos is a meal. Five is a decision you'll make anyway if you order one at a time.

Calories in Koreatown, Thai Town, Little Armenia and Little Tokyo dishes

Los Angeles eats far more than Mexican food, and the other neighborhoods' dishes vary just as widely. These figures, also from USDA FNDDS, are per standard portion. Restaurant plates in Koreatown or on Sawtelle are often bigger than one portion, so count the cups or the pieces.

Why the bowl size matters more than the dish

A cup of pho is 189 calories, but nobody in Los Angeles orders a cup. If your bowl holds three cups of broth, noodles and beef, that's about 567 calories and 43 g of protein by the same figures, which is still a sound lunch. Bibimbap works the same way: 123 calories a cup sounds tiny until a stone bowl arrives holding three or four. Pad Thai is the one that climbs fastest, at 308 calories a cup, because the noodles are stir-fried in oil.

For Korean barbecue, USDA has no single average, because it depends on what goes on the grill. The useful rule is to fill up on the grilled meat and the vegetable banchan, and treat the rice, noodles and sweet marinades as the part you count. In Little Armenia, a chicken kabob plate is high-protein; the rice pilaf and bread are where the calories add up.

What's in a Yoshinoya beef bowl or teriyaki chicken bowl?

Yoshinoya, the Japanese rice-bowl chain, publishes full nutrition facts for its US menu. Its regular bowls come on white rice with mixed vegetables, and the numbers show how much the choice of protein matters.

The regular Grilled Teriyaki Chicken bowl gives you 12 g more protein than the regular beef bowl with vegetables for 199 fewer calories. Yoshinoya also lists brown rice: a 227 g serving is 255 calories against 298 for the same weight of white rice, a small saving if you eat here often.

A fat-loss day built on Los Angeles food

Here's a day of eating in Los Angeles that lands near 1,500 calories with 125 g of protein, using the USDA and chain figures above. It suits a smaller adult aiming to lose fat steadily; a larger or more active person can add a snack. It's an example, not a prescription: if you have a medical condition, check your targets with your doctor or a registered dietitian.

The pattern matters more than the exact foods. Protein comes first at every meal, the tortilla or rice is portioned once rather than twice, and the drinks are water, black coffee or unsweetened iced tea rather than horchata.

A muscle-gain day built on Los Angeles food

For muscle gain in Los Angeles you need more food, not different food. This day comes to about 2,570 calories and 163 g of protein, enough to support training three or more times a week for many adults.

Are LA smoothies and juice-bar orders healthy?

Smoothies in Los Angeles can be a meal or a dessert, and the label doesn't tell you which. By USDA averages, a medium fruit smoothie with dairy (864 g, about 29 fluid ounces) is 570 calories with 20 g of protein. The same size with added protein is 683 calories with 63.5 g of protein. A small with added protein, the one in the muscle-gain day above, is 427 calories and 39.7 g.

So a protein smoothie can stand in for a meal after a workout. A fruit-only smoothie on top of three meals is a few hundred extra calories that rarely keeps you full. If you're losing fat, order the small size, ask for added protein, and count it as food, not a drink.

How does live coaching fit around eating out in Los Angeles?

Training is the half of the plan that's hardest to keep in Los Angeles, because a gym visit often means another drive. MakeMyFitness is live online personal training: a certified coach on a 45-minute video call, watching your form and correcting it in real time, at home, in your building's gym or at the gym you already use. Our coaches are based in India, so LA sessions sit in the evening, between 5:30 and 10 PM Pacific time all year, or early, from 5 to 6:30 AM. A 6 PM session ends in time for a 7 PM dinner in Koreatown.

Our lead coach, Kumar Abhishek, is also a qualified Human Performance Nutritionist (K11 School of Fitness Sciences), so you can bring this kind of food question to your sessions. Personal Gym Training is $25 a session or $223 for 12, and Personal Home Training is $28 or $255.

To see a full coached evening, visit our Los Angeles page. If you're weighing the cost, our guide to what a personal trainer costs in Los Angeles compares local rates and gym dues, and staying fit in Los Angeles covers the hikes, loops and beach path. For other cities, start at our US page.