How to track potatoes????

mivey04

Hi, so I made some homemade sweet potato fries today from 1 very large potato. It weighed 350g raw. I then cut it and put it in the oven with oil and cinnamon. I weighed it afterwards and it only weighed 165g. The difference in carbs is a lot so I am unsure how to track this on mfp. if I look up 350g raw it says 70c. 165g cooked says only about 35c. Someone help pls!!!

Spliner1969

Technically I think you're supposed to weigh before you cook them but here's the rub.. the reason they weigh less is that the water content is gone after baking them. I used to weigh before I cooked them but now I don't bother, I just weigh it after when I am about to eat it. Hasn't made a huge difference in weight loss, if any, because we're talking about water content. However, if you eat a LOT of potatoes then it might be a big deal. What I bake most often is cauliflower and I tend to weigh it after I bake it, but honestly there's so few calories in it that it doesn't matter to me. The big deal is the oil, it's got a ton of calories, so if you can use very little it'll help more than worrying about the before/after weight of the sweet potatoes. Next time get a bbq brush or a mister, and try misting or brushing on a very light coat of oil before baking, that way you can keep it to a tbsp or less (most oil is 180ish calories PER TBSP) when you bake them. But, if you wanted to be completely accurate you'd probably need to weigh it before you bake it because most calories in the database are based on raw foods unless otherwise stated in the description.

lemurcat12

Better to weigh raw if possible, but your numbers don't make sense anyway.

350 g of raw sweet potato (from the USDA site/entry) is 301 calories.

165 g cooked (with skin) would be 152 calories.

This makes sense to me, since you wouldn't lose more than half the weight from roasting them. (The calories match up if the uncooked was around 177 grams.) Did you cut off a portion (like skin, when shaping them into fries)? Or could you have weighed them wrong? (A large sweet potato would be closer to 350 than 165 in my experience.)

Francl27

Your numbers don't make sense. There's no way a 350g potato would cook down to 165g unless you basically burnt it to a crisp.

Queenmunchy

crazyravr wrote: »

Weight EVERYTHING raw in GRAMS and you are safe.

Also I would not worry about the potato but rather about the "little bit of oil" part... cause this could mean different amount to different people.

This. Weigh raw, weigh your oil, then cook it. If you plan to eat a portion of the cooked dish, add your raw ingredients to the recipe builder and weigh the end total in grams. That end number you can set as the number of portions, and weigh and log as many portions (grams) as you eat.