A silly question about bananas and oranges

GingerbreadCandy

When you have entries such as Oranges - Raw and Bananas - Raw. Are you supposed to weigh the fruits with and without the skin?

I am asking on one hand, lately the skin seems to make up 1/3 of my fruit, and because the entries also have weirdly specific serving sizes such as "one cup, sections, without membrane".

So that made me question what exactly 100g of fruit were referring to. -.^

Logic would dictate without, as that is the part you are eating…

Sued0nim

without

also double check you've chosen the right entry by a quick google search

eg for banana

http://www.nutracheck.co.uk/calories/calories_in_fruit/calories_in_bananas.html

GingerbreadCandy

Thanks!

TimothyFish

Stuff like this makes me question why people are so obsessed with weighing their food. For a banana, I expect the answer is without the skin, since no one eats the skin. For oranges it gets more complicated, since some people remove the skin completely, while others remove the zest and eat the skin. Also, the zest is sometimes used in cooking.

GingerbreadCandy

TimothyFish wrote: »

Stuff like this makes me question why people are so obsessed with weighing their food. For a banana, I expect the answer is without the skin, since no one eats the skin. For oranges it gets more complicated, since some people remove the skin completely, while others remove the zest and eat the skin. Also, the zest is sometimes used in cooking.

Lol, yeah, I am aware it's silly. But the fact that it wasn't specified has been nagging my perfectionist side and I wanted an answer once and for all.

SergeantSausage

I'll go as far as to weigh an apple or pear both before AND after I eat it ... so I know how much the remaining core weighs and can take it off the total weight.

kommodevaran

I too weigh items that has peel, stems, pits, skin and bone that needs to be removed, before and after I eat, but it makes me wonder, as Timothy says, what is really meant to be "the edible part" - I eat the red skin on peanuts, but never the apple core, I swallow the pits of the pomegranate but carefully remove all the white polystyreny stuff from citrus. I've recently learnt that some people will throw away the yummy goodness that is chicken skin. I'm shocked.

cheshirecatastrophe

Yeah...I think weighing is good in that it can teach you what a serving size actual is for something more calorie-dense like pasta or cereal. Or a "small" versus "large" banana. (Fun fact: there are banana entries in the MFP database wherein a small, medium, and large banana all have 120 calories). It also encourages a mindset of being really, really careful to track everything you eat. But when it comes to foods where different people have different definitions of edible parts, or that can dehydrate (hence weigh less technically, but only through loss of water) while sitting in the fridge for a week, you're talking about so few calories that have *got* to be in the government-acceptable margins for error. Combine that with how TDEE/calorie needs are estimates...to be, it's not worth stressing about +/- 15 calories of orange.

lemurcat12

It's actually logical, if you think about it. The entry is for what you are eating. It's like how you don't include the bones in the weight for meat, with those same USDA entries.

Liftng4Lis

Without.

emdeesea

I always cut things up and then weigh that. Whatever I'm going to eat is what I weigh and log.

JPW1990

TimothyFish wrote: »

Stuff like this makes me question why people are so obsessed with weighing their food. For a banana, I expect the answer is without the skin, since no one eats the skin. For oranges it gets more complicated, since some people remove the skin completely, while others remove the zest and eat the skin. Also, the zest is sometimes used in cooking.

If you have to watch specific things like salt or iron or sugar, that's not obsession. It's the only way to have an accurate number. As a side effect, it also makes it blatantly obvious how many inaccurate entries are in the food database. 6 olives or medium banana, might as well just throw a dart at a dartboard and enter whatever you get.

TimothyFish

JPW1990 wrote: »

TimothyFish wrote: »

Stuff like this makes me question why people are so obsessed with weighing their food. For a banana, I expect the answer is without the skin, since no one eats the skin. For oranges it gets more complicated, since some people remove the skin completely, while others remove the zest and eat the skin. Also, the zest is sometimes used in cooking.

If you have to watch specific things like salt or iron or sugar, that's not obsession. It's the only way to have an accurate number. As a side effect, it also makes it blatantly obvious how many inaccurate entries are in the food database. 6 olives or medium banana, might as well just throw a dart at a dartboard and enter whatever you get.

People are still throwing darts when they weigh their food, it is just that because their digital scale will tell them the weight in hundredths of a gram they think they are being more accurate. What they ignore is the fact that the calories on the label are based on someone in a lab taking measurements of a lot of stuff and taking the average. There is also the problem of food getting lighter during shipping. The calories may be based on food with more water in it.