Oats???

Springerrr
Springerrr Posts: 44 Member
edited November 14 in Food and Nutrition
Search for oats on MFP. Top hit: 600cal/cup. Second hit Quaker Oats: 300cal/cup (this is also what is on the label)
Anyone have any insight into this?

Replies

  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    Dry vs. prepared, probably.

    Mine (Bob's Red Mill steel cut) are 140 for a 1/4 cup (although I agree with kommodevaran and use the gram serving that is also given). When prepared they are around .5 cup.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    Also, if you are using a packaged brand, use the specific information on the package (compare it with what's found in MFP under that product). If you just bought some oats from a bin or farmer's market, the USDA entry is a good source.
  • mumfy23
    mumfy23 Posts: 61 Member
    Entries with a green check have been verified - that may also be helpful.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    Use what's on your label...if you're eating Quaker oats, search for Quaker oats, not some generic oat entry
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    mumfy23 wrote: »
    Entries with a green check have been verified - that may also be helpful.

    I would caution people against this. The verified entries are still ridiculously often wrong.
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
    Check your label and use that.
  • Lisa_ASD_Mummy
    Lisa_ASD_Mummy Posts: 36 Member
    I always check the label and weigh my food, I never trust the MFP database to be the same as what I have
  • Christine_72
    Christine_72 Posts: 16,049 Member
    edited January 2017
    boobaloo1980 wrote: »
    I always check the label and weigh my food, I never trust the MFP database to be the same as what I have

    Same here. And always double and triple check, I blindly trusted the database entries when i first started here, and many a mistake was made in my diary!
  • TeaBea
    TeaBea Posts: 14,517 Member
    Springerrr wrote: »
    Search for oats on MFP. Top hit: 600cal/cup. Second hit Quaker Oats: 300cal/cup (this is also what is on the label)
    Anyone have any insight into this?

    You have to be specific. Steel cut vs. old fashioned vs. instant. Cooked vs. dry. Like others have said.....don't assume accuracy in the database.....lots of wrong (or personalized) entries.

  • sympha01
    sympha01 Posts: 942 Member
    edited January 2017
    Dry versus prepared. Basic experiment. Take 40g of dry oats. Add water and cook them. Now what does it weigh? More, right? The calories didn't change, but the weight did. Visa versa, take equal weights dry oats and cooked oats. The cooked oats /started out/ as a much smaller amount of dry oats when they were dry, and therefore had fewer calories. Hence, 1/2 cup cooked oats has way fewer calories than 1/2 cup dry oats.

    FWIW, meat and most vegetables are the exact opposite: they weigh less when cooked, sometimes substantially.

    General rule of thumb for me: if it's at all possible, I weigh / measure my food before cooking it. Much more consistent. In the case of oats, someone else's idea of how much water to add is likely not going to be the same as my idea, and their final volume / weight of oats is going to be affected by that, and hence may have a vastly different calorie count.

    Best practice to weigh and measure uncooked if you can! Sometimes it's not an option, I get that, but then you have to accept that there's a big guessing factor.

    And also, whether you measure first then cook, or cook then measure, be mindful about choosing the database entry that matches that.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,607 Member
    It's actually worse than just cooked vs. raw making a difference. Different rolled oats measure differently. I always weigh my oats raw, and use 30g, but I dip them out of the cannister with a 1/4C measure. For some rolled oats (such as the ones from my health food store), 30g is a barely level 1/4 cup. For other rolled oats (like the ones from my farmers market), 30g is well over level - looks like up to 1T over visually, sometimes.

    Now, rolled oats are not calorie-dense enough that this difference would blow one's weight loss. But other foods are. So, yeah, use weight! ;)
  • Springerrr
    Springerrr Posts: 44 Member
    edited January 2017
    Thank you so much for all your replies! What a great community this is! OK, so the consensus/conclusion is that that 600 calorie green-checked entry, which is double the labelling, is simply wrong, if we are to assume that Quaker Oats labelling is correct, which, given the omnipresence of the product, I am going to go ahead and assume that.
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