Measuring vegetables

ashleydanib
ashleydanib Posts: 24 Member
in Food and Nutrition
When measuring vegetables like broccoli or sugar snap peas that "shrink" when they cook, do you measure before or after you cook them? Since a cup of sugar snap peas raw is not the same measurement when it's steamed.

Replies

  • AmazonMayan
    AmazonMayan Posts: 1,168 Member
    Weigh them raw. The shrinking is loss of water which has no calories so the calorie count doesn't change.
  • seska422
    seska422 Posts: 3,217 Member
    This is where a food scale comes in handy.

    Weigh veggies on a food scale before cooking.
  • diannethegeek
    diannethegeek Posts: 14,776 Member
    I meaaure them raw. I also find it so much easier to drop them on a digital food scale instead of trying to use measuring cups for them.
  • mjwarbeck
    mjwarbeck Posts: 699 Member
    Usually after....I'm making tons of veggies for the five of us....
  • seska422
    seska422 Posts: 3,217 Member
    AmazonMayan wrote: »
    Weigh them raw. The shrinking is loss of water which has no calories so the calorie count doesn't change.

    Yeah, the calorie count doesn't change for the whole batch. However, a cup of cooked (anything that loses water when cooked) will have more calories than uncooked and 100 grams of cooked (anything that loses water when cooked) will have more calories than 100 grams of uncooked because of the water loss.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    diannethegeek wrote: »
    I meaaure them raw. I also find it so much easier to drop them on a digital food scale instead of trying to use measuring cups for them.

    This.

    There are raw and cooked entries (and how cooked matters too), but I always use raw because weighing when chopping is what's easy for me.
  • JeromeBarry1
    JeromeBarry1 Posts: 10,179 Member
    seska422 wrote: »
    AmazonMayan wrote: »
    Weigh them raw. The shrinking is loss of water which has no calories so the calorie count doesn't change.

    Yeah, the calorie count doesn't change for the whole batch. However, a cup of cooked (anything that loses water when cooked) will have more calories than uncooked and 100 grams of cooked (anything that loses water when cooked) will have more calories than 100 grams of uncooked because of the water loss.

    Ergo, if it's more important to you to reduce your calorie intake, you measure raw to to minimize the calorie intake, and if it's more important to eat every available calorie, you measure them cooked.
  • seska422
    seska422 Posts: 3,217 Member
    edited February 2016
    JeromeBarry1 wrote: »
    seska422 wrote: »
    AmazonMayan wrote: »
    Weigh them raw. The shrinking is loss of water which has no calories so the calorie count doesn't change.

    Yeah, the calorie count doesn't change for the whole batch. However, a cup of cooked (anything that loses water when cooked) will have more calories than uncooked and 100 grams of cooked (anything that loses water when cooked) will have more calories than 100 grams of uncooked because of the water loss.

    Ergo, if it's more important to you to reduce your calorie intake, you measure raw to to minimize the calorie intake, and if it's more important to eat every available calorie, you measure them cooked.

    If you use the raw calorie data for the cooked portion, you are eating more calories than you think you are eating.

    I go for accuracy and you can get accuracy either way.

    If you weigh raw, you are good to go because the nutritional information from the USDA is from the raw weight.

    If you want to weigh out a cooked portion, weigh the whole batch raw before cooking to get the overall calories and then weigh the whole batch again after cooking. If your portion weighs 38% of the cooked weight, it's also 38% of the calories for the batch.

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