Weighing fresh vegetables

ajc1309

Should I weigh them uncooked or cooked? For example, tonight I made sweet potato fries. I weighed the potatoes and they weighed about 425g (this was between 2 people) so my portion would have been about 212g. When I weighed out my portion cooked, it weighed 125g. I oven baked them with no oil or anything.

AnnPT77

Either one works - just be sure to use the matching database entry. A little caution may be required, since the database is crowd-sourced, but you should find that (say) a roasted/baked veggie entry will have more calories per gram/oz than a raw veggie entry, because some of the water content is lost in the cooking. A steamed veggie entry should be closer to the raw, in calories.

Personally, I prefer to use the raw weight & calories in most cases, and explicitly add any oil (or the like) I've used in the preparation, rather than making assumptions about what may be included in something like "roasted cauliflower" as a database entry.

hellobaconplease

I always use raw weight and entries

livingleanlivingclean

raw weight - the cooked weight will change depending on cooking time and method.

serindipte

I always weigh raw when possible. It's more accurate because the food will lose/gain variable amounts of moisture depending on how and how long it's cooked. There isn't a way to be exact on that.

ETA: I weigh meat raw, as well, when I'm able.

rileysowner

Raw, as stated the cooked weight will vary from batch to batch and the variance is due to water, not caloric elements.

pebble4321

Raw is good, and probably easiest to find accurate database entries.
But, if you have already cooked them, then look for a roast/steamed/boiled etc entry in the database.
Either is OK.

If you regularly cook veggies the same way (roasting with olive oil and herbs, or making a salad with the same dressing) then you can use the recipe builder which makes it easy to add the extra stuff like oil or dressing ingredients.

callsitlikeiseeit

everything weighed raw unless you have no other option (ie: estimating when you eat out)