Calories in cooked vs raw meat

brendak76

I just realized that the calories in cooked meat are different than in raw meat. Yikes! I had been logging boneless skinless chicken thighs in my diary and realized that the cooked version of boneless skinless chicken thighs has almost double the calories. Am I right on that? I am thinking I need to be looking for cooked meat instead of just a general entry for chicken.

diannethegeek

Log it however you weigh it. So you can weigh it raw and log the raw weight or you can weigh it after cooking and choose an entry that matches your cooking style (ie don't use a grilled entry if you boiled it, etc).

brendak76

I've been weighing it cooked and unknowingly logging it raw. So what I thought was 180 calories is really about 330. I guess I'm done with lunch now!

CooCooPuff

brendak76 wrote: »

I've been weighing it cooked and unknowingly logging it raw. So what I thought was 180 calories is really about 330. I guess I'm done with lunch now!

At least you caught yourself and can prevent this with your future lunches.

sing809

I just realized how much this was throwing off my calories estimates. I knew food lost weight when you cooked it, but I didn't realize it was so much. I have been weighing food before and after cooking the last couple of days so that I can figure out how much I should measure out for accurate calories.

Ground Turkey (lean) -lost 25%
I need to measure out 3 oz of cooked meat, but record 4 oz in MFP

Grilled Top Sirloin,Roasted Asparagus, and Roasted Kabocha Squash - lost 15%
I need to measure out 85g, but record 100g in MFP.

I was probably consuming considerably more calories more than I thought I was each time I recorded one of these foods.

Has anyone else done similar measurements that they can share.

retropactum

Can someone explain this in further detail? I was aware that there was going to be a variation of calories depending on how it's processed (i.e. cooked), but I didn't realize it was that much. I had to go back to the database to check it out. If I log a half chicken breast skinless, roasted it says 142 cal. The same size raw skinless meat gives me 130. I guess I’m not seeing what the OP sees, but I really want to understand this all because I never thought much about it before.

If I weigh and log my items raw, and then cooked it does that mean it's now more calories than what I weighed out originally? Is the difference enough that I/we should worry about whether I’m logging cooked or raw?

Example, I eat a 4 ounces Kroger boneless, skinless chicken tenderloin every night for dinner. I weigh it raw and use the barcode scanner to log it, which gives me roughly 90 calories per 4 oz. I’ve never weighed the cooked food but assuming that food cooks down, if I logged the 4 oz that I weighed raw and it cooks down some, doesn’t that make up for the difference in calories? Or should I be weighing out 4 oz and logging 5 oz to make up the variation?

Sorry if that’s not worded properly. I’m even confusing myself as I write this out. Please help explain!

Thanks in advance

galgenstrick

retropactum wrote: »

Can someone explain this in further detail? I was aware that there was going to be a variation of calories depending on how it's processed (i.e. cooked), but I didn't realize it was that much. I had to go back to the database to check it out. If I log a half chicken breast skinless, roasted it says 142 cal. The same size raw skinless meat gives me 130. I guess I’m not seeing what the OP sees, but I really want to understand this all because I never thought much about it before.

If I weigh and log my items raw, and then cooked it does that mean it's now more calories than what I weighed out originally? Is the difference enough that I/we should worry about whether I’m logging cooked or raw?

Example, I eat a 4 ounces Kroger boneless, skinless chicken tenderloin every night for dinner. I weigh it raw and use the barcode scanner to log it, which gives me roughly 90 calories per 4 oz. I’ve never weighed the cooked food but assuming that food cooks down, if I logged the 4 oz that I weighed raw and it cooks down some, doesn’t that make up for the difference in calories?

Sorry if that’s not worded properly. I’m even confusing myself as I write this out. Please help explain!

Thanks in advance

You're doing it correctly. If you weight it before cooking it, and use the barcode scanner, it's calculating the calories accurately, unless the serving size says "4 oz. cooked" then you need to weigh it after cooking.

Ready2Rock206

retropactum wrote: »

Example, I eat a 4 ounces Kroger boneless, skinless chicken tenderloin every night for dinner. I weigh it raw and use the barcode scanner to log it, which gives me roughly 90 calories per 4 oz. I’ve never weighed the cooked food but assuming that food cooks down, if I logged the 4 oz that I weighed raw and it cooks down some, doesn’t that make up for the difference in calories?


Thanks in advance

If you weigh it raw and log it raw then you're doing it right. Doesn't matter if the weight changes after cooking. The cooking doesn't alter the calories (unless you're adding other stuff to it) the cooking alters the weight.

retropactum

Okay, thank you! Got into a mini panic over the original post.

Cortelli

retropactum wrote: »

Can someone explain this in further detail? I was aware that there was going to be a variation of calories depending on how it's processed (i.e. cooked), but I didn't realize it was that much. I had to go back to the database to check it out. If I log a half chicken breast skinless, roasted it says 142 cal. The same size raw skinless meat gives me 130. I guess I’m not seeing what the OP sees, but I really want to understand this all because I never thought much about it before.

If I weigh and log my items raw, and then cooked it does that mean it's now more calories than what I weighed out originally? Is the difference enough that I/we should worry about whether I’m logging cooked or raw?

Example, I eat a 4 ounces Kroger boneless, skinless chicken tenderloin every night for dinner. I weigh it raw and use the barcode scanner to log it, which gives me roughly 90 calories per 4 oz. I’ve never weighed the cooked food but assuming that food cooks down, if I logged the 4 oz that I weighed raw and it cooks down some, doesn’t that make up for the difference in calories? Or should I be weighing out 4 oz and logging 5 oz to make up the variation?

Sorry if that’s not worded properly. I’m even confusing myself as I write this out. Please help explain!

Thanks in advance

If you're weighing it raw and then logging it as raw, you're fine.

The challenge comes when someone weighs 4 oz of cooked meat, and then uses an entry for raw meat -- the cooked version is essentially more calorie dense (lots of water lost during the cooking, meaning the same amount of calories now reside in a portion that weighs less cooked, because of the water lost).

lporter229

retropactum wrote: »

If I weigh and log my items raw, and then cooked it does that mean it's now more calories than what I weighed out originally? Is the difference enough that I/we should worry about whether I’m logging cooked or raw?


Thanks in advance

It depends on when you weigh it. If you weigh it raw then cook it, it will likely weigh less after cooking (unless you are pumping full of liquid). Most of what it loses is water, so it doesn't lose calories, just weight. So 4 oz of raw chicken breast may equate to 3 oz of cooked chicken breast. If you are using the precooked weight, you are likely either correct or over estimating. If you use the weight after cooking, you may be underestimating your calories. Hope that makes sense.

To make it easy, I use the raw weight and select the raw options from the database. However, some of them tend to be all over the place, so I usually google it to compare to other websites and save the entries that match closely with other websites.

mochapygmy

I cook my "protein of the week" in bulk once or twice a week because I don't have the patience to cook daily except for steaming some veg.

Last week I made turkey taco meat. I used to packages of ground turkey so 10 servings, weighed all the other ingredients and logged it all in the recipe feature. After cooking I weighed everything, divided that number by 10 and knew how big and how many calories each serving contained.

So OP I would encourage you to log the foods raw and use the recipe feature if preparing more than one meal. When I search for turkey taco meat I come up with a bunch of options but I have no way of knowing what ingredients people cooked used in their recipes.

spoonyspork

Weighing (and entering) as raw is always your safest bet, but it also depends on how fatty said meat is and how much of it you drain off. So for example: chicken I always enter as raw and bacon I always weigh and enter as cooked (and the packages I get usually give the cooked calories), unless I use the cooked off bacon fat for something.

This was after lots of experiments with cooking bacon in different ways, weighing the raw then weighing the cooked meat and drained-off fat separately, and comparing the raw calories to the weight of the cooked bacon plus fat (my math always ended up with my cooked bacon being within 0-10 calories of what the package said, so I decided to trust the package)

And I avoid not-lean beef even though it probably ends up being lower calorie ounce-for-ounce than lean because it needs to be drained (some people even rinse it!) after cooked (don't drain the lean because of so little fat, so its lighter weight after cooked is more due to water, so closer to what its raw nutrition info shows). I just would rather be off by over-calculating than under. YMMV.

brendak76

Thanks for all of the tips. I've just recently started eating meat again after a couple of years on a vegan streak so I hadn't thought about the cooked vs raw.

In our family I have to weigh it cooked. I'm cooking in bulk for 2 teenage boys who are athletes and a husband so dividing out an entire package of meat just won't work for us. I don't want to yell at my kids that they ate 1.3 portion sizes and messed me up, lol!

I really only eat chicken and some turkey so I'll have to just watch how I log.