Calories in cooked pasta and rice

sonners29
sonners29 Posts: 5 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Hello everyone, need help please! Very confused about the calories in pasta, have got one packet that says per 100g raw weight its 350 calories but then have another packet that says per 100g cooked weight its only 150? Surely the calories should stay the same? Sorry if this doesn't make sense but I'm easily confused! Thanks in advance

Replies

  • JeromeBarry1
    JeromeBarry1 Posts: 10,179 Member
    The pasta absorbs water during cooking and swells in size. The "cooked weight" is measuring the water which has zero calories and high weight in addition to the pasta, which has high calories and low weight.
  • JeromeBarry1
    JeromeBarry1 Posts: 10,179 Member
    If you think that's confusing, consider this. If you leave cooked pasta in the refrigerator for 12 hours, the starch transforms into a resistant form of starch. It tastes the same, but passes through the stomach and small intestine undigested. The bacteria in your large intestine are able to break it down and they eat it. You, the human, don't actually get the benefit of the calories in the pasta when that happens. Rather, your biome does. It's ok to be nice to your biome, but you, the human, don't really get the pasta calories at all.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    Say you have pasta that's 56 g dry (US serving size) and 200 calories. If when you cook it, it becomes 130 g, that would mean that for the same pasta 130 g cooked=200 calories.

    If you want to show the two in 100 g weights, they'd come out to: 357 calories for 100 grams dry and 154 calories for 100 g cooked -- pretty similar to what you have.

    Does that make sense? The calories don't change, but the weight does depending on when you cook it.

    This is why making sure the entry/calorie information you use is for the state of the food when you weighed it is so important.
  • sonners29
    sonners29 Posts: 5 Member
    Thank you, think I'm getting it
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
    I'd really try and weigh dry if possible, to be honest. The cooked weight will depend a lot on how the food is cooked (130g a serving of pasta is about what I've found too, but for rice, it's really all over the place).
  • Wynterbourne
    Wynterbourne Posts: 2,224 Member
    edited August 2016
    I always weigh mine dry because the cooked weight will always vary. The longer it's cooked, the more water it absorbs, the heavier the final cooked product will be. 100g of cooked pasta that was boiled for 10 minutes will have more calories than 100g of cooked pasta boiled for 12 minutes because of the different pasta to absorbed water ratios. Weighing it from the beginning I have an accurate calorie count that won't change at all despite how much 0 calorie water it absorbs.

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