Is Tajin Good For Weight Loss Or Fattening?

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Tajin is a type of seasoning you can put on a variety of dishes. Find out whether this tasty addition interferes with your weight loss goals or not.

The main ingredients of Tajin are dried chili peppers, dehydrated lime juice, salt, and silicon dioxide (a natural compound to avoid caking).

These ingredients result in 0 calories per serving size of 1 gram (1/4 teaspoon). Since this is likely a rounded number, bigger portions likely contain a few extra calories anyway.

However, this still means tajin will be good (or at least not bad) for weight loss in combination with the right dishes.

If this seasoning helps you enjoy your healthy meal plan more, this could benefit how consistent you are. In that case, tajin can definitely be considered to help your weight loss efforts.

Nutrition content of tajin

For most foods, there are a variety of different nutrients to look at before being able to say whether they are helpful for a diet or not.

In the case of tajin, things stay relatively simple due to its straightforward nutrition content. More specifically, one gram (1/4 teaspoon) of tajin contains the following nutrients (1):

  • Calories: 0 calories
  • Sodium: 190 mg (8% of the Daily Value)
  • Fat: 0 grams
  • Protein: 0 grams
  • Sugar: 0 grams
  • Other carbs: 0 grams

These numbers are likely rounded which means you can expect a few of these nutrients to be present in tiny amounts.

However, even then, it is clear that tajin is mostly a way to make your food taste better without much of an impact on your diet if you eat it in reasonable amounts. It will not be the ingredient that makes you gain weight.

One thing you do want to keep in mind is that while salt is an essential nutrient, it can be suboptimal for health in large amounts. If you already eat a lot of salt, you may want to be mindful about how much tajin you eat.

Can you have tajin on keto?

A ketogenic diet involves keeping your carbohydrate intake low enough to get into a state of ketosis where you mostly use fats as energy source.

Since tajin claims to have no significant amounts of carbohydrates per serving, it is keto-friendly in reasonable amounts.

At the same time, you may still want to keep the amount of salt in this seasoning in mind for reasons not related to any keto numbers.

Is tajin sugar-free?

On the nutrition label of tajin, you can find that this seasoning contains 0 grams of sugar per serving size.

In reality, this is likely a rounded number since tajin does contain dehydrated lime which should contain a tiny amount of natural sugar to my knowledge.

That being said, tajin is basically sugar-free.

Weight loss is not only about the nutrients in food

Something people sometimes forget is that a good diet plan is not only about the nutrients of the foods in them.

More specifically, how much you enjoy the things you eat is not just a luxury. Humans are not robots.

By being able to enjoy your foods more thanks to seasoning like tajin, it could become easier to stay consistent with your diet plan. In turn, this offers a variety of health benefits too.

Weight-loss-friendly tajin combinations

By now it should be clear that whether or not a dish with tajin is good for weight loss will depend more on the other ingredients than this Mexican seasoning.

Some examples of foods that are relatively good for weight loss and combine well with tajin include:

  • Eggs
  • Avocado
  • Nuts and seeds (in controlled portions)
  • Fruits like watermelon
  • Salads
  • Fish
  • Animal meats

With some of these foods like nuts, you do want to keep an eye on your portions when trying to lose weight. Especially because tajin tends to make it easier to eat more of them.

That being said, these examples are still relatively helpful foods.

Alternatives for tajin when trying to lose weight

Tajin is definitely not the only type of seasoning that can be helpful for people trying to lose weight. If you don’t like its taste or want to switch things up, you can also consider some of the following alternatives:

  • Paprika powder
  • Chili powder
  • Garlic salt
  • Onion powder
  • Dried lime zest
  • Salt

Similar to tajin, these options tend to be low in calories (as long brands don’t sneak any sugar in) and in turn, these tend to be helpful for making dishes tastier when trying to get in shape.

There are of course other weight-loss-friendly herbs and spices but the ones above are somewhat similar in taste.

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Matt Claes founded Weight Loss Made Practical to help people get in shape and stay there after losing 37 pounds and learning the best of the best about weight loss, health, and longevity for over 4 years. Over these years he has become an expert in nutrition, exercise, and other physical health aspects.