Weighing food
Replies
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Not sure where my comment on "weighing hot vs cold" got translated into "weighing cooked vs raw". If you have two foods, prepared exactly the same and having the same starting mass, and you weigh one that's been in the refrigerator (cold) and the other that's been sitting out (hot), they will have the same mass.
The misconception is that we're talking about cooking food, not allowing it to warm to room temperature and considering that hot. Cooking as in bringing it up to an edible temperature of around 145-165F depending on the item being cooked. I would not personally consider something sitting out at room temperature to be hot, but that's just me, and no, unless of course it dried out as it was sitting out the difference in weight would be minimal.
So to be more clear, lets be more specific. A raw boneless skinless chicken breast raw will weigh less when cooked to a temperature of 165F in an oven (feel free to try this experiment for yourself). The reason for the difference in weight, among other things, is the loss of moisture. Although the calories are the same for the two things, the cooked product will weigh less with the same amount of calories which, unless you use a 'cooked' entry in the database, would be inaccurate for logging if you weighed it after cooking. The difference for me anyway has always been minimal enough that I weigh my items cooked unless the entry I am using in the database specifically says 'raw'.
My mistake was not being more specific. We can change the definition of hot all we want to support an argument, but the original argument was 'cooked' not 'hot'.Spliner1969 wrote: »The process of cooking things removes water, and they will weigh less.
Even with that statement, it may also be not true if you used different cooking methods like Sous Vide and did not remove the product from the packaging/plastic before weighing the cooked product as the moisture would still be held inside the package.
'Hot' is an assumption which is being changed/used modify thread. Not to mention it has nothing to do with the OP's original question, so I as well will stop defending it at this point since we've all gone off the rails with this one.
I'd say yes, using a food scale is addictive and subjective to the OP. It's not a bad thing though, it helps you be more accurate. 0 -
Hi! Just got a food scale and have some questions. Hope someone can help:
Do you weigh food raw or cooked? Hot or cold? Does this make a difference?
With salmon or chicken, is the 5 oz rec for the cooked weight?
As far as veggies so, I assume a cup of raw cauliflower would weigh more than baked. Would cool baked cauliflower weigh differently than baked cauliflower warned up?
Lastly...what's the best way to log food when there are SO many different options with such a variety of nutritional info for the same exact foods/servings?
Thank you in advance for your help...Spliner1969 wrote: »Not sure where my comment on "weighing hot vs cold" got translated into "weighing cooked vs raw". If you have two foods, prepared exactly the same and having the same starting mass, and you weigh one that's been in the refrigerator (cold) and the other that's been sitting out (hot), they will have the same mass.
The misconception is that we're talking about cooking food, not allowing it to warm to room temperature and considering that hot. Cooking as in bringing it up to an edible temperature of around 145-165F depending on the item being cooked. I would not personally consider something sitting out at room temperature to be hot, but that's just me, and no, unless of course it dried out as it was sitting out the difference in weight would be minimal.
So to be more clear, lets be more specific. A raw boneless skinless chicken breast raw will weigh less when cooked to a temperature of 165F in an oven (feel free to try this experiment for yourself). The reason for the difference in weight, among other things, is the loss of moisture. Although the calories are the same for the two things, the cooked product will weigh less with the same amount of calories which, unless you use a 'cooked' entry in the database, would be inaccurate for logging if you weighed it after cooking. The difference for me anyway has always been minimal enough that I weigh my items cooked unless the entry I am using in the database specifically says 'raw'.
My mistake was not being more specific. We can change the definition of hot all we want to support an argument, but the original argument was 'cooked' not 'hot'.Spliner1969 wrote: »The process of cooking things removes water, and they will weigh less.
Even with that statement, it may also be not true if you used different cooking methods like Sous Vide and did not remove the product from the packaging/plastic before weighing the cooked product as the moisture would still be held inside the package.
'Hot' is an assumption which is being changed/used modify thread. Not to mention it has nothing to do with the OP's original question, so I as well will stop defending it at this point since we've all gone off the rails with this one. I'd say yes, using a food scale is addictive and subjective to the OP. It's not a bad thing though, it helps you be more accurate.
OP asked about hot vs cold weighing, separately from asking about cooked vs raw. As you can see in the original post that I've provided.
I'm not trying to go "off the rails", I just don't like the meaning of my post to be misconstrued as it was.1 -
Hi! Just got a food scale and have some questions. Hope someone can help:
Do you weigh food raw or cooked? Hot or cold? Does this make a difference?
With salmon or chicken, is the 5 oz rec for the cooked weight?
As far as veggies so, I assume a cup of raw cauliflower would weigh more than baked. Would cool baked cauliflower weigh differently than baked cauliflower warned up?
Lastly...what's the best way to log food when there are SO many different options with such a variety of nutritional info for the same exact foods/servings?
Thank you in advance for your help...Spliner1969 wrote: »Not sure where my comment on "weighing hot vs cold" got translated into "weighing cooked vs raw". If you have two foods, prepared exactly the same and having the same starting mass, and you weigh one that's been in the refrigerator (cold) and the other that's been sitting out (hot), they will have the same mass.
The misconception is that we're talking about cooking food, not allowing it to warm to room temperature and considering that hot. Cooking as in bringing it up to an edible temperature of around 145-165F depending on the item being cooked. I would not personally consider something sitting out at room temperature to be hot, but that's just me, and no, unless of course it dried out as it was sitting out the difference in weight would be minimal.
So to be more clear, lets be more specific. A raw boneless skinless chicken breast raw will weigh less when cooked to a temperature of 165F in an oven (feel free to try this experiment for yourself). The reason for the difference in weight, among other things, is the loss of moisture. Although the calories are the same for the two things, the cooked product will weigh less with the same amount of calories which, unless you use a 'cooked' entry in the database, would be inaccurate for logging if you weighed it after cooking. The difference for me anyway has always been minimal enough that I weigh my items cooked unless the entry I am using in the database specifically says 'raw'.
My mistake was not being more specific. We can change the definition of hot all we want to support an argument, but the original argument was 'cooked' not 'hot'.Spliner1969 wrote: »The process of cooking things removes water, and they will weigh less.
Even with that statement, it may also be not true if you used different cooking methods like Sous Vide and did not remove the product from the packaging/plastic before weighing the cooked product as the moisture would still be held inside the package.
'Hot' is an assumption which is being changed/used modify thread. Not to mention it has nothing to do with the OP's original question, so I as well will stop defending it at this point since we've all gone off the rails with this one. I'd say yes, using a food scale is addictive and subjective to the OP. It's not a bad thing though, it helps you be more accurate.
OP asked about hot vs cold weighing, separately from asking about cooked vs raw. As you can see in the original post that I've provided.
I'm not trying to go "off the rails", I just don't like the meaning of my post to be misconstrued as it was.
your post was not "misconstrued" it's just not correct and it got corrected.
I cook pork chops and eat 1...put the other one in the fridge...weigh it cold...130 grams...warm it up in the microwave...weigh it hot...125grams...there is a difference between hot and cold foods just like there is a difference between raw and cooked...
ETA:...I didn't misconstrue your post...my original post was reference but it does matter when you are talking high calorie foods that you get the correct weight for weight loss...
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Hi! Just got a food scale and have some questions. Hope someone can help:
Do you weigh food raw or cooked? Hot or cold? Does this make a difference?
With salmon or chicken, is the 5 oz rec for the cooked weight?
As far as veggies so, I assume a cup of raw cauliflower would weigh more than baked. Would cool baked cauliflower weigh differently than baked cauliflower warned up?
Lastly...what's the best way to log food when there are SO many different options with such a variety of nutritional info for the same exact foods/servings?
Thank you in advance for your help...Spliner1969 wrote: »Not sure where my comment on "weighing hot vs cold" got translated into "weighing cooked vs raw". If you have two foods, prepared exactly the same and having the same starting mass, and you weigh one that's been in the refrigerator (cold) and the other that's been sitting out (hot), they will have the same mass.
The misconception is that we're talking about cooking food, not allowing it to warm to room temperature and considering that hot. Cooking as in bringing it up to an edible temperature of around 145-165F depending on the item being cooked. I would not personally consider something sitting out at room temperature to be hot, but that's just me, and no, unless of course it dried out as it was sitting out the difference in weight would be minimal.
So to be more clear, lets be more specific. A raw boneless skinless chicken breast raw will weigh less when cooked to a temperature of 165F in an oven (feel free to try this experiment for yourself). The reason for the difference in weight, among other things, is the loss of moisture. Although the calories are the same for the two things, the cooked product will weigh less with the same amount of calories which, unless you use a 'cooked' entry in the database, would be inaccurate for logging if you weighed it after cooking. The difference for me anyway has always been minimal enough that I weigh my items cooked unless the entry I am using in the database specifically says 'raw'.
My mistake was not being more specific. We can change the definition of hot all we want to support an argument, but the original argument was 'cooked' not 'hot'.Spliner1969 wrote: »The process of cooking things removes water, and they will weigh less.
Even with that statement, it may also be not true if you used different cooking methods like Sous Vide and did not remove the product from the packaging/plastic before weighing the cooked product as the moisture would still be held inside the package.
'Hot' is an assumption which is being changed/used modify thread. Not to mention it has nothing to do with the OP's original question, so I as well will stop defending it at this point since we've all gone off the rails with this one. I'd say yes, using a food scale is addictive and subjective to the OP. It's not a bad thing though, it helps you be more accurate.
OP asked about hot vs cold weighing, separately from asking about cooked vs raw. As you can see in the original post that I've provided.
I'm not trying to go "off the rails", I just don't like the meaning of my post to be misconstrued as it was.
your post was not "misconstrued" it's just not correct and it got corrected.
I cook pork chops and eat 1...put the other one in the fridge...weigh it cold...130 grams...warm it up in the microwave...weigh it hot...125grams...there is a difference between hot and cold foods just like there is a difference between raw and cooked...
She was responding to the previous poster saying that there never was a question about hot vs. cold foods--he was saying the question was just about raw vs. cooked, and the hot vs. cold concept was introduced elsewhere, which is entirely not true, as she showed in her bolding. I don't think she is arguing against your point.1 -
Hi! Just got a food scale and have some questions. Hope someone can help:
Do you weigh food raw or cooked? Hot or cold? Does this make a difference?
With salmon or chicken, is the 5 oz rec for the cooked weight?
As far as veggies so, I assume a cup of raw cauliflower would weigh more than baked. Would cool baked cauliflower weigh differently than baked cauliflower warned up?
Lastly...what's the best way to log food when there are SO many different options with such a variety of nutritional info for the same exact foods/servings?
Thank you in advance for your help...Spliner1969 wrote: »Not sure where my comment on "weighing hot vs cold" got translated into "weighing cooked vs raw". If you have two foods, prepared exactly the same and having the same starting mass, and you weigh one that's been in the refrigerator (cold) and the other that's been sitting out (hot), they will have the same mass.
The misconception is that we're talking about cooking food, not allowing it to warm to room temperature and considering that hot. Cooking as in bringing it up to an edible temperature of around 145-165F depending on the item being cooked. I would not personally consider something sitting out at room temperature to be hot, but that's just me, and no, unless of course it dried out as it was sitting out the difference in weight would be minimal.
So to be more clear, lets be more specific. A raw boneless skinless chicken breast raw will weigh less when cooked to a temperature of 165F in an oven (feel free to try this experiment for yourself). The reason for the difference in weight, among other things, is the loss of moisture. Although the calories are the same for the two things, the cooked product will weigh less with the same amount of calories which, unless you use a 'cooked' entry in the database, would be inaccurate for logging if you weighed it after cooking. The difference for me anyway has always been minimal enough that I weigh my items cooked unless the entry I am using in the database specifically says 'raw'.
My mistake was not being more specific. We can change the definition of hot all we want to support an argument, but the original argument was 'cooked' not 'hot'.Spliner1969 wrote: »The process of cooking things removes water, and they will weigh less.
Even with that statement, it may also be not true if you used different cooking methods like Sous Vide and did not remove the product from the packaging/plastic before weighing the cooked product as the moisture would still be held inside the package.
'Hot' is an assumption which is being changed/used modify thread. Not to mention it has nothing to do with the OP's original question, so I as well will stop defending it at this point since we've all gone off the rails with this one. I'd say yes, using a food scale is addictive and subjective to the OP. It's not a bad thing though, it helps you be more accurate.
OP asked about hot vs cold weighing, separately from asking about cooked vs raw. As you can see in the original post that I've provided.
I'm not trying to go "off the rails", I just don't like the meaning of my post to be misconstrued as it was.
your post was not "misconstrued" it's just not correct and it got corrected.
I cook pork chops and eat 1...put the other one in the fridge...weigh it cold...130 grams...warm it up in the microwave...weigh it hot...125grams...there is a difference between hot and cold foods just like there is a difference between raw and cooked...
ETA:...I didn't misconstrue your post...my original post was reference but it does matter when you are talking high calorie foods that you get the correct weight for weight loss...
The part your ignoring though is it isn't the food being hot vs cold that is the weight loss, it's the cooking. If you take that 125gram hot pork chop and put it in the fridge, it will be 125g cold when you pull it back out. It won't gain or lose weight just from being hot or cold. It's semantics really and you are correct in what you are trying to say, but what you are arguing is pre vs cooked weight, not hot vs cold weights. Microwaving is still a form of cooking, even if the food is already cooked, you're still cooking it again.
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Another q to throw at y'all ...
Anyone nervous about being TOO obsessed with the food scale? I'm on day 1 of using mine and can already feel the obsession coming on...
I don't worry about it. For me it is just part of preparing a meal. I wash fruit before I eat it. I cut things up and mix stuff together and add seasonings. I put things in serving dishes or on plates. Putting it on the scale is just part of that. When I am out I will estimate, but when I'm in my own kitchen I don't think weighing everything is obsessive.1 -
As much as all this is interesting.................. It is an exercise in futility!! The inaccuracies of nutritional information outweigh the difference in hot/cold measurements of food.
Pick a method and be consistent. That is all you can do.1 -
I always weigh food the way I'm going to eat it. If I'm eating it cooked I weigh it cooked.
The problem with that is the weight changes from cooking vary depending on cooking time among other things. So if you cook something slightly longer its weight will be different, usually because of water loss, however, that water loss does not reduce the calories. I weight raw because it will give a better idea of the actual calories of what I am eating. Probably the only exception to this is fatty meats where the fat will cook out, but even then a significant portion of the weight loss in that cooked meat is water not fat.0 -
Spliner1969 wrote: »
Not sure where my comment on "weighing hot vs cold" got translated into "weighing cooked vs raw". If you have two foods, prepared exactly the same and having the same starting mass, and you weigh one that's been in the refrigerator (cold) and the other that's been sitting out (hot), they will have the same mass.
Temperature doesn't affect mass (at a noticeable level), unless you're causing water to leave, which is the cooked vs raw part, which is not what I was referencing.
If you want to get down to the atomic level, then yes, there is a mass change upon heating. But your kitchen balance isn't going to pick up on that.
I didn't translate it that way but I can tell you I have put a cold cooked pork chop on my scale and it weighed 136 grams...warm it up in the microwave and it comes out weighing 130 grams...that is a difference in temp right there...more water evaporating...not sure...fat dissolving who knows...what I know personally is cold meat weighs more than warm meat...cold potatoes weigh more than hot potatoes.
If it is steaming at all when heated it would be water loss. I have, when I didn't prepare the meal, weighed cooked veggies that are right off the stove. As I was standing there getting the next piece of food I was going to weigh, the weight went down a gram or two just from the water that was steaming off.1 -
Weighing food has given me freedom vs. obsession. I actually enjoy it because I know exactly how much of everything I am getting. I can always eat ALL my food, which is very satisfying for me. Between weighing and pre-logging/planning my meals, the burden of eating to lose weight is completely off my shoulders and is a simple addition problem to solve each day.0
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Hi! Just got a food scale and have some questions. Hope someone can help:
Do you weigh food raw or cooked? Hot or cold? Does this make a difference?
With salmon or chicken, is the 5 oz rec for the cooked weight?
As far as veggies so, I assume a cup of raw cauliflower would weigh more than baked. Would cool baked cauliflower weigh differently than baked cauliflower warned up?
Lastly...what's the best way to log food when there are SO many different options with such a variety of nutritional info for the same exact foods/servings?
Thank you in advance for your help...Spliner1969 wrote: »Not sure where my comment on "weighing hot vs cold" got translated into "weighing cooked vs raw". If you have two foods, prepared exactly the same and having the same starting mass, and you weigh one that's been in the refrigerator (cold) and the other that's been sitting out (hot), they will have the same mass.
The misconception is that we're talking about cooking food, not allowing it to warm to room temperature and considering that hot. Cooking as in bringing it up to an edible temperature of around 145-165F depending on the item being cooked. I would not personally consider something sitting out at room temperature to be hot, but that's just me, and no, unless of course it dried out as it was sitting out the difference in weight would be minimal.
So to be more clear, lets be more specific. A raw boneless skinless chicken breast raw will weigh less when cooked to a temperature of 165F in an oven (feel free to try this experiment for yourself). The reason for the difference in weight, among other things, is the loss of moisture. Although the calories are the same for the two things, the cooked product will weigh less with the same amount of calories which, unless you use a 'cooked' entry in the database, would be inaccurate for logging if you weighed it after cooking. The difference for me anyway has always been minimal enough that I weigh my items cooked unless the entry I am using in the database specifically says 'raw'.
My mistake was not being more specific. We can change the definition of hot all we want to support an argument, but the original argument was 'cooked' not 'hot'.Spliner1969 wrote: »The process of cooking things removes water, and they will weigh less.
Even with that statement, it may also be not true if you used different cooking methods like Sous Vide and did not remove the product from the packaging/plastic before weighing the cooked product as the moisture would still be held inside the package.
'Hot' is an assumption which is being changed/used modify thread. Not to mention it has nothing to do with the OP's original question, so I as well will stop defending it at this point since we've all gone off the rails with this one. I'd say yes, using a food scale is addictive and subjective to the OP. It's not a bad thing though, it helps you be more accurate.
OP asked about hot vs cold weighing, separately from asking about cooked vs raw. As you can see in the original post that I've provided.
I'm not trying to go "off the rails", I just don't like the meaning of my post to be misconstrued as it was.
your post was not "misconstrued" it's just not correct and it got corrected.
I cook pork chops and eat 1...put the other one in the fridge...weigh it cold...130 grams...warm it up in the microwave...weigh it hot...125grams...there is a difference between hot and cold foods just like there is a difference between raw and cooked...
ETA:...I didn't misconstrue your post...my original post was reference but it does matter when you are talking high calorie foods that you get the correct weight for weight loss...
The part your ignoring though is it isn't the food being hot vs cold that is the weight loss, it's the cooking. If you take that 125gram hot pork chop and put it in the fridge, it will be 125g cold when you pull it back out. It won't gain or lose weight just from being hot or cold. It's semantics really and you are correct in what you are trying to say, but what you are arguing is pre vs cooked weight, not hot vs cold weights. Microwaving is still a form of cooking, even if the food is already cooked, you're still cooking it again.
no I am not ignoring it cooked is cooked...it's like saying you can be "more" pregnant
...but I am not going to argue the point any further.
I don't have to prove my point in words I did it with the 50+lbs I've lost
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https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods/list is your friend.
For meat, I buy big packages of small cuts. I also buy big boxes of zipper bags in various sizes. I have a Sharpie marker on hand when I open the big package. If I intend to use the sandwich bags, I weigh a bag. It's 3 grams. Using the bag as a glove I grab a piece of meat and zip the bag closed. No mess. then I weigh the bag and the meat inside. This gives me a number, and I subtract 3. I write the final value on the bag with the Sharpie and note the type of meat. T for turkey, C for chicken, and so on. The bagged pieces will go into the freezer. The last piece will go into the skillet after I weigh it. I record the weight of the pieces that go into each meal and afterward update my food diary with exact values.
One thing I use often is chicken breast, natural chicken breast with no injected saline.
For that, I search the USDA list for "chicken, breast, raw" This returns a list with dozens of choices. The one I want is "05062, Chicken, broiler or fryers, breast, skinless, boneless, meat only, raw". I copy that string and paste it into the mfp food search and, again, get many choices. The one I want is near the top. I check that the nutrition of the mfp database matches the USDA database, and add the correct value of weight to my food diary.
Yes, it takes time, but the accuracy of it all is worth the effort in my estimation.0 -
On the other hand, if I have a fried egg I use the USDA value of a fried egg without bothering to weigh the egg. Large is 50 g and X Large is 56 g.0
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Spliner1969 wrote: »
Not sure where my comment on "weighing hot vs cold" got translated into "weighing cooked vs raw". If you have two foods, prepared exactly the same and having the same starting mass, and you weigh one that's been in the refrigerator (cold) and the other that's been sitting out (hot), they will have the same mass.
Temperature doesn't affect mass (at a noticeable level), unless you're causing water to leave, which is the cooked vs raw part, which is not what I was referencing.
If you want to get down to the atomic level, then yes, there is a mass change upon heating. But your kitchen balance isn't going to pick up on that.
Scale clearly isn't accurate enough then.
I kid, I kid.0 -
Spliner1969 wrote: »
Not sure where my comment on "weighing hot vs cold" got translated into "weighing cooked vs raw". If you have two foods, prepared exactly the same and having the same starting mass, and you weigh one that's been in the refrigerator (cold) and the other that's been sitting out (hot), they will have the same mass.
Temperature doesn't affect mass (at a noticeable level), unless you're causing water to leave, which is the cooked vs raw part, which is not what I was referencing.
If you want to get down to the atomic level, then yes, there is a mass change upon heating. But your kitchen balance isn't going to pick up on that.
I didn't translate it that way but I can tell you I have put a cold cooked pork chop on my scale and it weighed 136 grams...warm it up in the microwave and it comes out weighing 130 grams...that is a difference in temp right there...more water evaporating...not sure...fat dissolving who knows...what I know personally is cold meat weighs more than warm meat...cold potatoes weigh more than hot potatoes.
Microwaves warm things by heating up the water specifically. If you heat something in the microwave and it actually heats up then invariably some of that water has evaporated. What you are measuring is a difference due to loss of moisture and is unrelated to the temperature itself. Before it was in the microwave there were X grams of water in your food, now their are X-6 grams.
There is technically a change in weight associated with temperature, warm things are heavier than colder things because adding energy to a system increases its mass, but that occurs on such a tiny scale in conventional temperatures that it really is undetectible. Its E=mc2 and considering how much energy you would have to add to add significant mass when its on the scale of M=E/C2 you reaaaly don't have to worry about that. If you are adding enough energy to detectably increase its mass you will have lots of other more pressing problems.2 -
Okay going to be a total nerd for a second because actually I suppose I could calculate this. If you heated up a 1 pound steak in the microwave and it was a 1000 watt microwave that was 100% efficient where all of the energy was transfered to the steak and you heated it for 5 minutes that would pump 300,000 joules into the steak which would increase its temperature by something like 150 degrees celsius and would also increase its mass so that instead of weighing 1 pound it would weigh M = (300,000 joules)/(3x10^8 m/s)^2) more which would mean it would now weigh 1.00000000000736 pounds.
I think to increase its weight by an amount where you could detect it on a kitchen scale it'd probably have to be hotter than the sun in which case you probably wouldn't have a kitchen scale anymore.
Okay to the OP's main question. Hot or cold doesn't matter at all in a practical sense. Raw versus cooked is going to matter because cooked food as significantly less water in it than raw food which means it will be significantly lighter. Often calorie entries put into MFP will specifiy whether it is for the raw or cooked ingredient so just select the appropriate one.4 -
yup you geeked out....love it.0
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