Do Vapes Have Calories

Yes, most vapes do contain calories, but the number is extremely low and almost always non-nutritive. The calories in vapes come from the base ingredients in e-liquids: propylene glycol, vegetable glycerin, and occasionally flavourings. However, because vaping involves inhalation, not ingestion, the body doesn’t absorb vape liquid in the same way it does food or drink. As a result, these calories have little to no impact on your daily energy balance, and vaping does not contribute meaningfully to weight gain or calorie intake.

Where Do the Calories in Vapes Come From?

The small amount of calories in e-liquids primarily comes from vegetable glycerin (VG) and, to a lesser extent, propylene glycol (PG). VG is a sugar alcohol derived from vegetable oils and contains about 4.3 calories per gram. PG is slightly less caloric at around 4 calories per gram. Flavourings can contain trace calories depending on their chemical structure, but even in sweet tasting vape juices, the actual energy content remains negligible when measured per puff or per session.

How Many Calories Are in a Typical Vape?

The number of calories in a vape varies by how much liquid is used and what it’s made of, but the amounts are tiny. A 1ml serving of vape juice might contain 4 to 5 calories if it’s high in vegetable glycerin. However, those calories are not consumed in the same way as food. During vaping, most of the liquid is aerosolised and exhaled, not digested. The absorption of calories through the lungs is minimal to non-existent. Even heavy vaping throughout the day is unlikely to provide more than 10 to 20 calories, which is nutritionally irrelevant for most people.

Can Vaping Affect Weight or Appetite?

While vapes themselves don’t deliver calories in the traditional sense, nicotine, a common ingredient in many vape products can have indirect effects on weight and appetite. Nicotine is a stimulant and appetite suppressant. It can temporarily reduce hunger and slightly increase metabolism. This is one reason why smoking or vaping may delay eating or reduce snack cravings in some users. However, this effect is short-lived and not reliable for long-term weight control. Once nicotine use stops, appetite often returns stronger, which can lead to rebound weight gain.

Do Flavoured Vapes Contain Sugar?

Despite tasting sweet, flavoured vapes do not contain sugar. The sweetness comes from artificial or naturally derived flavour compounds, not from table sugar or caloric sweeteners. These flavourings are suspended in PG or VG, which can have a mild sweet taste themselves. So even though a vape might taste like bubblegum or vanilla cake, there are no actual carbohydrates or sugars present, and the sweetness is not enough to register as a calorie load in the way a sugary drink or dessert would.

Can Vaping Break a Fast?

This question comes up often among people who practice intermittent fasting. Technically, because most vapes contain a trace amount of energy from glycerin, you could argue that vaping breaks a strict fast. However, the calorie content is so low and it is inhaled rather than ingested that most experts and fasting communities consider vaping not significant enough to break a fast, especially in comparison to food or drink. That said, if you are doing a fast for metabolic or autophagy-related reasons, even minor substances may be worth avoiding.

Is There Any Nutritional Value in Vaping?

No, vaping provides no protein, fat, vitamins, minerals, or fibre. The few calories it contains come from non-nutritive sources and serve no physiological purpose other than producing vapour. Vaping cannot nourish the body in any way, and it doesn't replace food or offer energy in any meaningful nutritional sense.

How Vaping May Influence Your Diet

While vaping doesn’t contain calories that impact your weight directly, it can influence eating behaviour. Some users find that vaping curbs their cravings for sweets or snacks, especially if they use dessert-flavoured e-liquids. Others may vape more during periods of hunger to avoid snacking. On the flip side, some people report that vaping certain flavours actually triggers food cravings by mimicking the taste of high-calorie foods. The effect is individual and not rooted in the calories themselves, but in the psychological and sensory cues vaping provides.

Inhaled vs Ingested Calories: Why It Matters

While vape liquids may technically contain caloric ingredients, the key distinction is method of entry. Calories only affect your body when they’re absorbed through the digestive system, not when they're aerosolised and inhaled into the lungs. Most of the glycerin and propylene glycol in vape juice is vaporised and exhaled, with only trace amounts possibly absorbed through lung tissue. That’s why even high-VG vape juice doesn’t contribute meaningful energy to your diet, your body doesn’t metabolise it like it would a spoonful of oil or sugar.

Can Vaping Spike Insulin or Affect Blood Sugar?

For people with diabetes or those tracking blood sugar levels, the sweet taste of vapes can raise questions. However, there’s no evidence that vaping non-nicotine or flavoured e-liquids spikes insulin. Since vape juice contains no digestible sugars or starches, it doesn't stimulate insulin production the way sweet foods do. Some research suggests that nicotine may influence insulin sensitivity, but this is an indirect hormonal effect, not caused by calorie intake. The flavour itself is misleading, it mimics sugar without containing it or triggering the same physiological response.

Psychological Impact of Sweet Flavours Without Calories

One unique aspect of vaping is that it delivers the taste and aroma of high-calorie foods without actual energy intake. While this might seem like a harmless craving-buster, it can sometimes backfire. Your brain expects calories to follow sweet tastes, and when they don’t arrive, it can trigger rebound hunger or increased cravings later on. This is similar to what happens with artificial sweeteners in some people. So, while vaping doesn’t add calories, it may still influence your eating habits or psychological hunger depending on how you react to the dissonance between flavour and energy.

Can Vaping Help with Appetite Control?

Some individuals use vaping, particularly nicotine vapes or dessert-flavoured options to help manage hunger or cravings during dieting. Nicotine is a known appetite suppressant and can slightly increase resting metabolic rate. Flavoured vapes may also serve as a substitute for snacking. However, this strategy has limitations. The hunger-suppressing effect of nicotine is temporary, and when nicotine use stops, appetite usually rebounds. More importantly, replacing eating with vaping can mask real hunger cues and lead to disordered eating patterns or compensatory overeating later on.

What About Vaping with CBD or THC?

Some vape liquids contain CBD (cannabidiol) or THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), and users often wonder if these contribute calories. The answer is technically yes, both cannabinoids are fat-soluble compounds and contain energy, but the amount inhaled per session is so small that it doesn’t register calorically. A full vape cartridge containing CBD might have 50 to 100 calories in total, but even frequent use delivers a fraction of a calorie per puff. As with nicotine vapes, the behavioural impact is more relevant than the caloric content.

Are Vape Calories Trackable in a Diet App?

Because vape calories are so low and not absorbed through the digestive tract, they are generally not listed in food tracking apps or nutritional databases. Even if you were to manually enter the ingredients in vape juice, the result would overestimate your intake. For most users — even those tracking calories meticulously, vaping does not need to be factored into dietary totals. The exception might be if you’re doing a metabolic fast or an extended monitored diet with medical supervision.

Why There’s So Much Confusion About Vape Calories

A big reason people are confused about whether vapes have calories is because vape juice tastes like food but is used like a drug. You inhale something that smells like custard or watermelon, so your brain assumes it must be caloric. To complicate things, food flavourings are used in many vape liquids the same chemicals used to flavour snacks and desserts. But even though these compounds provide scent and taste, they’re present in microscopic quantities and don’t carry any meaningful caloric load.

The Role of MCT Oil in Some Vape Products

Some vape products, especially in the CBD or THC market use MCT oil as a carrier instead of glycerin. MCTs (medium-chain triglycerides) are real dietary fats, commonly found in coconut oil, and they’re calorically dense at about 9 calories per gram. However, as with glycerin, most of this oil is vaporised and not ingested. Still, vaping MCT oil is controversial, not because of calories, but because inhaling lipids may be unsafe for the lungs. It’s another example of how calories may exist in a product but still don’t affect energy balance unless digested.

Vapes vs Edibles: A Critical Distinction

In the cannabis space, many people compare vaping to edibles but from a caloric standpoint, they couldn’t be more different. Edibles are ingested and metabolised, often containing sugars, fats, and starches that contribute 100–300 calories per serving or more. Vapes, by contrast, bypass digestion completely, so even if the substance being vaped contains calories in its raw form, those calories don’t make it into your bloodstream through the gut. This is an important distinction for users who are calorie-conscious or managing weight alongside cannabis use.

Do Vape Clouds Contain Calories?

The short answer is no, vape clouds are made up of aerosolised particles, not combusted or digested material. Even though glycerin-based vapour can create thick, sweet-smelling clouds, these are not caloric in the way smoke from food or cooking is. You’re not inhaling food residue, you’re inhaling gas formed from vaporised ingredients that largely exit the body during exhalation. There is no significant metabolic or energy impact.

Caloric Absorption Through the Lungs: The Science

One reason calories from vapes don’t count is that your lungs are not designed to extract nutrition. They’re highly efficient at gas exchange, oxygen in, carbon dioxide out but they don't absorb macronutrients like your digestive tract does. Even though trace molecules from vape liquids may enter the bloodstream via the lungs, they are minuscule and metabolically irrelevant. Calories must be ingested, not inhaled, to contribute to your total energy balance.

Do Vapes Interfere With Calorie Tracking?

For most people, vaping doesn’t impact calorie tracking at all. However, if you’re using vapes to suppress appetite, delay meals, or avoid snacking, they may be indirectly altering your food intake. For example, someone on a calorie-restricted diet might use dessert-flavoured vapes to “trick” their brain out of craving sweets. While this might help in the short term, it could backfire if it leads to bingeing later or builds dependence on artificial appetite cues. So, while vapes don’t deliver calories, they can change how and when you consume them.

Summary

Vapes do contain a small number of calories, mostly from vegetable glycerin, but these calories are not absorbed in a way that contributes meaningfully to your diet or weight gain. The energy content per vape session is so minimal that it’s effectively irrelevant to most people’s nutritional tracking. That said, vaping can indirectly affect appetite, cravings, and eating behaviour, especially if it contains nicotine or dessert-like flavours. If you’re watching your calorie intake closely, you can consider vaping a non-factor from a dietary standpoint but be aware of its subtle behavioural influence.