Croissant

Food · Grain · Food, Typed Supps

Twelve grams of saturated fat per hundred — more than any other bread product here, by a distance.

Stage by stage

Lamination (The pastry): Butter folded between dough layers dozens of times; the steam from it makes the layers.
Energy density (Stomach): 360 calories per 100 g, and a bakery croissant is 60–80 g.
Saturated fat (Liver): 12 g per 100 g — a third to a half of a day’s suggested limit in one pastry.
No fortification (The flour): Made from pastry flour, so none of the mandated folate, iodine or thiamin.

Timing

Nothing to time. Saturated fat effects on LDL accumulate over weeks, so this is about how often rather than when.

Time to effect

Per croissant: Around 7–10 g saturated fat at 60–80 g.
3–4 weeks: LDL response to a sustained change in saturated fat.

Allergens

Contains: Gluten. Derived from what this food is, not from a product label.

Eating patterns

Fits: Vegan, Vegetarian, Pescatarian, Halal, Kosher. Depends on the product: Low-FODMAP.

Satiety

47 on the satiety index, where white bread is 100 — low. Measured by Holt et al. (1995).

Environmental footprint

1.6 kg CO2e and 648 litres of freshwater per kg, matched to "Wheat & rye" in Poore & Nemecek (2018), Science 360.

Cost band

Cheap — roughly £2.5 per kg, as a band midpoint rather than a price.

Key nutrients

Saturated fat
Protein

Nutrition per 100g

Calories: 360
Protein: 10g
Carbohydrate: 35.6g
of which sugars: 5.1g
Fat: 19.1g
of which saturated: 12g
Fibre: 2.7g
Sodium: 462mg

Food vs. supplement

Croissants sit beside bread in the bakery and share almost nothing with it: forty times the saturated fat, a fraction of the folate, and no fortification at all because the mandate covers bread-making flour rather than pastry flour.

Kitchen tip

There is no lighter croissant — take the butter out and it stops being one. Frequency is the only lever there is.

Common myth

“It’s from the bakery, so it’s basically bread.” In reality: It is a pastry that happens to be sold beside bread. At 12 g of saturated fat per 100 g it carries forty times what white bread does, and one bakery croissant is a third to a half of a day’s suggested saturated fat. It also has almost no folate or iodine, because the fortification mandate covers bread-making flour and not pastry flour.