Is popcorn a healthy snack for weight loss? The reason you often hear this claimed is because you can eat a bowl of it, without consuming a crazy amount of calories (assuming you don't add butter or some other oil for flavor). To make it the healthiest possible, 3 cup of cooked air-popped popcorn contains just 93 calories and only 10 of those being calories from fat. There are more benefits to boot like 3.1 grams of protein, 2 mg of sodium (assuming it's unsalted), and 3.5 grams of fiber (which is 14% of your daily value). Now you have one more reason to call it a nutritious snack... the ORAC value measures the amount of antioxidants in 100 grams of a given food/beverage/ingredient. For this test, the results reveal that the amount of antioxidants in 100 grams (about 3.5 ounces) of air-popped popcorn is quite good for a snack.
ORAC Source
USDA Database for the Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity (ORAC) of Selected Foods, Release 2 - Prepared by Nutrient Data Laboratory, Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center (BHNRC), Agricultural Research Service (ARS), U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) - May 2010