Arugula nutrition facts

Arugula nutrition per serving & per 100 grams

What does one cup of arugula give you?

Nutrition facts are often stated per 100 grams. But 100 grams of arugula is about five packed cups, which isn't exactly a realistic portion.

Here's the nutrition data from USDA FoodData Central for 20 grams, a reasonable 1-cup portion, and for 100 grams.

Arugula, raw, rounded from USDA FoodData Central

Vitamin K is the standout even at realistic portions. A single cup covers close to a fifth of the 120 mcg Daily Value, and two cups in a salad get you to about 37%. Folate holds up reasonably well too, at about 5% of the Daily Value per cup, which is decent for 5 calories. The calcium is respectable for a plant source, at about 2.5% of the Daily Value per cup, and it may be more useful than that number suggests, for reasons covered below.

At 0.3 grams of fiber per cup, though, arugula contributes almost nothing to a daily fiber target. If that's what you're chasing, our complete guide to dietary fiber covers the foods that move the number.

Arugula vs spinach for calcium

Is arugula better than spinach for calcium?

Spinach looks better on paper for most things. Per 100 grams it has more iron, 2.7 mg against 1.5 mg, about twice the folate and more magnesium, 79 mg against 47 mg. Calcium is the exception, at 99 mg against arugula's 160 mg.

The bigger gap is in what your body can use. Spinach is one of the highest-oxalate foods in the produce aisle. Oxalates bind with calcium into a compound your gut can't easily separate, which reduces absorption. When researchers measured this directly in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, absorption of calcium from spinach averaged 5.1%, against 27.6% from milk in the same 13 adults. A follow-up study on kale, a low-oxalate brassica and a relative of arugula, found roughly 41% absorption, beating milk at 32% in 11 women.

Nobody has run that experiment on arugula, so treat this as mechanism rather than measurement. What we do have is one analysis of packaged salad greens. It put a group of leaves including rocket, the European name for arugula, at about 24 mg of oxalate per 100 grams, against about 694 mg for the group containing spinach. So arugula looks like a low-oxalate green, and it may be the better regular salad green or soup addition if you're prioritizing calcium.

Keep the size of this in view. A cup of spinach (30 grams) has about 30 mg of calcium, and at 5.1% that's about 1.5 mg absorbed. If a cup of arugula behaved like kale, you'd absorb about 13 mg. For comparison, a cup of milk has about 300 mg of calcium, which at 27.6% is about 80 mg. The best option is a variety of greens, and calcium from more than greens.

Who should limit arugula

Who should limit arugula?

Arugula is famous among growers for nitrate. A review in Nutrients describes rocket as a hyper-accumulator of nitrates, and levels vary widely with the cultivar, how it's grown and the environment.

That same review still encourages people to eat rocket, and at salad portions the amount appears too small to have a definite, noticeable effect on health. Just don't eat huge amounts of arugula day after day.

The caution worth taking seriously is this one. The vitamin K in arugula interacts with warfarin, because vitamin K works against the drug. That doesn't mean avoiding greens. The University of Iowa's guidance is to eat the same amount of vitamin K foods each week and check with your care team before big diet changes. If you take warfarin or another vitamin K antagonist, talk with your prescribing clinician about how much is appropriate for you.

Arugula in frozen meals

Why doesn't arugula work in a frozen meal?

We flash-freeze meals across three kitchens, and there's a short list of vegetables that survive that process. Broccoli survives it. Green beans, sweet potatoes, peppers, corn and sugar snap peas all hold up too.

Tender salad leaves don't. Ice crystals rupture the cell walls that hold a raw leaf rigid, and what thaws out is limp and watery. No amount of packaging fixes it. That's a formulation constraint for any frozen meal, ours included.

This makes arugula the perfect thing to add after the microwave. Heat a meal for a few minutes according to the heating instructions, then drop a handful of arugula on top and let the residual heat wilt it. You get the peppery contrast, the vitamin K and a bit of freshness on a meal that came out of your freezer, for about 5 more calories.

Building a meal around arugula

How do you turn arugula into a real meal?

Arugula alone won't make a very good meal. Two generous cups contain about 10 calories and a single gram of protein. Our current menu (October 2026) has 32 meals running from 20 to 55 grams of protein per tray, and you can check the calories, protein, carbs and allergens for every one of them before you order. Put the two together and the salad becomes a fresh, tasty addition.

If you want to build out a plan yourself, the Build A Meal Plan menu filters by goal, including Weight Loss, High Protein and High Fiber, so you can stack a box of the trays that fit and let fresh greens do the volume work. For heavier training weeks, the High Protein Meal Plan adds 2 extra ounces of meat per meal, about 10 more grams of protein. Either way, greens go on top at home.

We cover the same idea from the other direction in our guide to high-protein salads that actually fill you up, and in the wider guide to the best foods for weight loss.

Make it easy withHigh Protein Meal PlanFrom $63.00View plan

The short version: arugula is a good green that weighs very little, so it's hard to eat enough for a massive nutrient boost. It's still a strong source of vitamin K, likely a better calcium source than spinach, and a nearly free way to add flavor and texture to a plate. It just shouldn't be the foundation of your meal. Build around protein, then throw the handful on top after the tray comes out of the microwave.