Calories in a Full English Breakfast, Item by Item

By our count, a typical full English breakfast has about 1,140 calories. That is for 2 rashers of grilled back bacon, 2 grilled pork sausages, 2 fried eggs, half a tin of baked beans, a slice of buttered toast, a slice of black pudding, fried mushrooms, a grilled tomato and a hash brown. A lighter grilled plate comes to about 625 calories, and a big café-style plate with extras reaches about 1,880.

So the calories in a full English breakfast depend mostly on the extras you add and how much oil the cook uses. Below is the item-by-item breakdown with portions in grams, three totals with the math shown, and the swaps that save the most.

Calories in full English breakfast items

Item	Portion	Calories	Protein	Fat	Carbs
Back bacon, grilled	2 thin rashers (40 g)	115	9.3 g	8.6 g	0 g
Pork sausages, grilled	2 sausages (90 g)	265	13.1 g	19.9 g	8.8 g
Fried eggs	2 large (92 g)	180	12.5 g	13.6 g	0.8 g
Baked beans in tomato sauce	Half a tin (200 g)	162	10.0 g	1.0 g	30.0 g
White toast with butter	1 slice (29 g) and 1 pat of butter (5 g)	113	2.6 g	5.0 g	14.3 g
Black pudding, dry-fried	1 slice (30 g)	89	3.1 g	6.5 g	5.0 g
Mushrooms, fried	80 g	85	1.1 g	8.8 g	0.3 g
Tomato, grilled	80 g	14	0.5 g	0.2 g	2.7 g
Hash brown, shop-bought, heated	1 (55 g)	119	1.4 g	6.3 g	15.5 g
Total		1,142	53.6 g	69.9 g	77.4 g

How we calculated it: each food’s values per 100 g, multiplied by the portion weight. Totals add the rounded numbers shown. The plates themselves are our own builds, not measured meals.

• British items come from the UK government’s CoFID dataset (McCance and Widdowson’s): Bacon rashers, back, grilled; Sausages, pork, chilled, grilled; Baked beans, canned in tomato sauce; Black pudding, dry-fried; Mushrooms, white, fried in rapeseed oil; Tomatoes, standard, grilled, flesh and seeds only.
• Eggs, bread, butter and the hash brown come from USDA FoodData Central. Toast is counted at the slice’s weight before toasting.

Where the portions come from:

• The NHS gives 130 g as the average weight of the meat in a cooked breakfast: 2 standard British sausages (around 9 cm long) and 2 thin-cut rashers of bacon. We split that as 45 g per sausage and 20 g per rasher. Grilled sausage and grilled back bacon have almost the same calories per 100 g (294 and 287), so a different split barely moves the total.
• We use 80 g for the mushrooms and the tomato, the NHS’s portion size for vegetables.
• The NHS also gives 30 g as the average slice of black pudding. Black pudding varies a lot by brand and slice size, so check the pack.
• The egg, bread slice, butter pat and hash brown weights are USDA’s.
• Half a tin of beans (200 g) is our own portion.

For boiled, scrambled or poached eggs and other egg sizes, see calories in 2 eggs.

Full English calories: lighter, typical and big plates

Here is how the total moves with the cooking method and the extras:

Item	Lighter	Typical	Big café-style
Bacon	2 rashers, fat trimmed, grilled: 86	2 rashers, grilled: 115	3 rashers, dry-fried: 177
Sausages	2 reduced-fat, grilled: 144	2 pork, grilled: 265	3 pork, fried in oil: 416
Eggs	2 poached: 143	2 fried: 180	2 fried: 180
Beans, half a tin	Reduced sugar and salt: 150	162	162
Toast	1 slice wholemeal, no butter: 81	1 slice white, buttered: 113	2 slices white, buttered: 226
Fried bread	None	None	1 slice: 144
Black pudding	None	1 slice: 89	2 slices: 178
Mushrooms, 80 g	Cooked without oil: 7	Fried: 85	Fried: 85
Tomato, 80 g	Grilled: 14	Grilled: 14	Fried: 71
Hash brown	None	1: 119	2: 239
Total calories	625	1,142	1,878

How we got these: both plates are our own builds, not measured meals. They use the same weight per sausage (45 g), rasher (20 g), slice of black pudding (30 g) and hash brown (55 g) as above, and we count the fried bread as a 29 g slice like the toast. The swaps use these CoFID entries, in calories per 100 g: back bacon, fat trimmed, grilled 214; back bacon, dry-fried 295; reduced-fat pork sausages, grilled 160; pork sausages fried in vegetable oil 308; reduced sugar, reduced salt baked beans 75; mushrooms stewed in unsalted water 9; tomatoes fried in rapeseed oil 89; white bread fried in rapeseed oil 498. USDA weighs a large poached egg at 50 g (143 per 100 g) and a slice of whole-wheat bread at 32 g (252 per 100 g).

For scale, the NHS says an average woman needs about 2,000 calories a day and an average man about 2,500. The typical plate is more than half of the first figure.

What changes the number

Grilling or frying the meat changes less than you might think. In CoFID, grilled pork sausages have 294 calories per 100 g and sausages fried in oil 308. Grilled back bacon has 287 and dry-fried 295.

Foods that soak up oil change the most:

• Mushrooms have 7 calories per 100 g raw and 106 fried in oil or butter.
• Tomatoes have 17 per 100 g grilled and 89 fried.
• A 29 g slice of bread is 77 calories as toast but about 144 as fried bread.

The cut of bacon matters. The NHS notes that back bacon has less fat than streaky. Per 100 g grilled, CoFID lists 337 calories for streaky bacon (the usual US style), 287 for back bacon and 214 for back bacon with the fat trimmed.

Café cooking can add more. USDA’s restaurant hash brown is 150 calories for the same 55 g, against 119 for a shop-bought one heated at home. Every teaspoon of oil (4.5 g) adds about 40 calories.

Lighter full English swaps

These are the biggest savings from the tables above:

• Reduced-fat sausages instead of regular, both grilled: saves 121 calories.
• Skip the hash brown: saves 119.
• Skip the black pudding: saves 89.
• Cook the mushrooms without oil: saves 78. Grill the tomato instead of frying it: saves 57.
• Toast instead of fried bread: saves 67 a slice. Leaving off the butter saves 36 a pat.
• Poach the eggs instead of frying them: saves 37 for two.
• Trim the fat off the bacon: saves 29 for two rashers. Back bacon instead of streaky saves 20.
• Try vegetarian sausages: CoFID’s baked or grilled vegetarian sausages have 179 calories per 100 g, so two at the same 90 g are about 161, against 265 for pork.
• Keep the beans. Half a tin has 162 calories with 10 g of protein and 9.8 g of fibre. Reduced sugar and salt beans have 150.

Put together, the lighter plate keeps almost the same protein as the typical one (about 53 g against 54 g) with about a third of the fat (22 g against 70 g).

Salt, saturated fat and processed meat

Adding up the sodium in the same CoFID and USDA entries, our typical plate has about 2,500 mg. Using the NHS label figures (1.5 g of salt for every 0.6 g of sodium), that is about 6.3 g of salt, a little over the NHS limit of 6 g a day for adults. Bacon, sausages, black pudding and beans supply most of it. Our big café-style plate has about 9.7 g.

Adding up the saturated fat the same way, the typical plate has about 21 g. The NHS says women should not eat more than 20 g a day and men no more than 30 g.

The NHS puts the 2 sausages and 2 rashers at 130 g of processed meat. If you eat more than 90 g of red and processed meat a day, it recommends cutting down to 70 g, and after a bigger day you can eat less on the days that follow. It also suggests grilling meat rather than frying it.

There is good news on the plate too: the 80 g of tomato counts as one of your 5 A Day, and so do 3 heaped tablespoons of baked beans. Beans count only once a day, however much you eat.

How to log your fry-up

• Count the extras. A second hash brown adds 119 calories and a slice of fried bread 144.
• Use the pack. Sausages, bacon and black pudding differ by brand, so if the label gives a figure per sausage or per slice, use that.
• Weigh once. Every 10 g of grilled sausage or grilled back bacon is about 29 calories.

If a fry-up is your weekend usual, log it in MacroScout, our calorie and macro tracker. With Pro, snap a photo of your plate and change any number before you save it, or scan a café menu to see which breakfast fits the calories you have left. On the free plan, enter the numbers from the table once, then repeat the meal with one tap.

For other British favourites, see calories in fish and chips and calories in chicken tikka masala.

This article is for general information and is not medical advice. Talk to your doctor before changing your diet, especially if you have a health condition.