FOOD WEIGHT.. before or after?

sunshines4nate

Hi all, never weighed food before but from what i can see on here it seems like a HUGE mistake not too so i bought myself a fancy little salter scale ready for today.. only problem is i weighed my food before i cooked it and then again after and it was conpletely different.. which weight do i follow the raw or cooked? Thanks in advance!

TavistockToad

depends what it is, but most things weigh raw, as long as you're logging the raw item too.

so weigh 50g of chicken before cooking it and log it using the 'chicken, raw' item in the database, then add any oil etc if you use it for cooking.

nordlead2005

preferably before, but after works as well and is sometimes the only way to weigh things (like if you cook up rice for a family of 5). The thing is, you have to use the right entry. There are both raw and cooked entries for many food items, but be careful with the database as some people enter things wrong.

MelaniaTrump

Chicken is the worst. Often it is injected with salt water solution which adds weight.
Use the weight BEFORE cooking.
I once cooked Aldi chicken breasts. I ended up with a giant puddle of water in my pan. Better brands are not like that.

VeryKatie

Raw. For everything. Make sure your database entries also indicate "raw".

spring913

Huh. This is interesting. I always weigh my food right before I put it on my plate. So meat is cooked. Now, I have a lot of weight to loose, so I can have a bigger caloric variance than those with less to loose, but it works well for me this way... so far.

What's the reason for weighing meat raw?

MelaniaTrump

spring913 wrote: »

What's the reason for weighing meat raw?

Opinion - for pure profits so you think you are getting a better price per pound.
Plumping - from wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plumping
“enhancing” or “injecting,” is a term that describes the process by which some poultry companies inject raw chicken meat with saltwater, chicken stock, seaweed extract or some combination...
Can be as much as 30%

Francl27

IMO it's never completely accurate anyway, so just do what you want but use the appropriate entry.

The only thing you have to weigh raw or dry is pasta, rice, etc, as cooked weight will really depend on how much water is absorbed. For meat, obviously the longer you cook it, the more fat will go, but your piece of meat will never exactly have the same amount of fat anyway (or water)... so just do what works best for you.

I lost 80 pounds weighing my meat cooked (except when cooking just one piece for myself). Entries are ALL OVER THE PLACE in the database anyway. A 6oz sirloin steak can be anywhere from 200 to 350 calories depending on what entry you look at, even USDA entries... how in the world do I know if my steak is considered 'lean' or not? I mean, the USDA entry is probably 300 calories for a 6z steak but restaurants often have them at 200 calories... meat is just a pain to log anyway.

FeelingFroggy13

Huh. This is interesting. I always weigh my food right before I put it on my plate. So meat is cooked. Now, I have a lot of weight to loose, so I can have a bigger caloric variance than those with less to loose, but it works well for me this way... so far.

What's the reason for weighing meat raw?

This is copied from LiveStrong article...this explanation made the most sense to me. I wondered the same as well. LInk for the entire article here:
http://www.livestrong.com/article/336835-why-do-caloric-counts-change-when-cooked/


Water Weight
You might wonder why, even when foods are cooked without additional fat, their caloric values per 100 g nevertheless increase slightly. One answer to this question is that water present in the raw food is often lost during cooking, and this increases the density and therefore the caloric value of the cooked food. For example, 100 g of raw chicken contains 75.8 g of water and 21.2 g of protein. When this chicken meat is cooked through roasting, water is lost so that there is 65.3 g of water and 30 g of protein present in every 100 g of roasted meat.

Raptor2763

Others might disagree with me, but I use raw measures because that's easier to weigh and what recipes I follow are expressed in terms of pre-cooked weight. However, I usually make my MFP entries in whole terms, such as "1 chicken leg" or something like that. I don't have time to get all down and dirty with micro-measurements

LivingtheLeanDream

Weigh before you cook it, in its raw form.

Zedeff

VeryKatie wrote: »

Raw. For everything. Make sure your database entries also indicate "raw".

Not for everything, but for 90% of things.

Calorie counts for things that lose lots of fat or water will fluctuate a lot pre/post cooking. Bacon for example, loses about 50% of its calories by cooking, presuming you're not slurping the rendered fat out of the pan. Bread is another example; you can weight the dough, but cooked bread has lots less water in it and will have more calories cooked than raw on a per-gram basis; the best way to log bread actually would be to log a portion of the entire loaf, as the whole-loaf calories will start with the raw ingredients which don't change with cooking.

brynandmaddie

I always weigh raw and enter ingredients in the recipe builder as such (and confirm they're accurate). Then when done cooking, I weigh again so I know how many oz servings I can make it for true accuracy. It's helped me lose over 53 lbs since November.

Unknown

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Alluminati

spring913 wrote: »

Huh. This is interesting. I always weigh my food right before I put it on my plate. So meat is cooked. Now, I have a lot of weight to loose, so I can have a bigger caloric variance than those with less to loose, but it works well for me this way... so far.

What's the reason for weighing meat raw?

Because people cook the meat in different ways that affect water weight, without or with added ingredients that also have calories.

Like someone said above, if you weigh raw then log it raw.

duddysdad

I always weigh things raw. Yes, things lose moisture, fat, etc. when cooked, but how can you be sure exactly how much? Id rather log more calories then less calories. For things like vegetables, fruit, meat, there are USDA entries. I trust those more than any other entries. I've always done this and I've had no problems losing weight.