Weighing Meat?

merbear787

Hey Fit Fam! do you weigh your meat raw or cooked? So when I cook a pound of ground turkey, I always divide it by four servings so it's 4oz raw each serving. Just curious because I don't really want to handle raw meat very much and wondering if a serving size should be 4oz raw or 4oz cooked! Thanks for the help!!!

JaydedMiss

Whatever you choose just make sure you use the right cooked or raw database entries. I personally weigh it raw because thats the way with the least variables.

kshama2001

merbear787 wrote: »

Hey Fit Fam! do you weigh your meat raw or cooked? So when I cook a pound of ground turkey, I always divide it by four servings so it's 4oz raw each serving. Just curious because I don't really want to handle raw meat very much and wondering if a serving size should be 4oz raw or 4oz cooked! Thanks for the help!!!

When you cook a 16 oz package of raw ground turkey, you will get less than 16 oz of cooked meat. So since you split it in 4, the database entry you should use would be for 4 oz of raw meat.

Make sure you use the entry with the fat content that corresponds to what you bought. Big difference in calories:



I look up foods in the USDA database and plug this syntax into MFP to find a system entry as opposed to a user-created entry.

Chadxx

I always go by raw weight. It is easier plus moisture loss during cooking is just one more variable to induce inaccuracy.

cross2bear

I'm an outlier on this topic - I weigh food how I eat it, unless a specific weight for an ingredient is stated in a recipe. So if I am eating cooked ground turkey and I have to calculate it outside of a recipe ( you know, where you just divide the whole recipe by number of serves) then I weigh cooked but pay attention to the selection from the database to be sure I record "cooked" turkey.

merbear787

Thanks everyone! It gets confusing because I also prep chicken in a crock pot so I make sure to log cooked chicken breast when I weigh it. I'll be sure to pay attention to the database!

Meelisv

Always cooked. No real reason, just that is what i'm used to and also less messy that way. And as mentioned above - i also like to weigh food how i eat it. Sure, during cooking meat can lose up to 1/3 of its raw weight, and it's not all water, but also fat. Still, it has not been issue for me, since that theoretical fluctuation in calories and macros has not hampered my weight loss, specially compared with all other factors. Really only meat products i weigh raw are those usually meant to be eaten raw, like salmon etc.

crooked_left_hook

I measure it raw because its easier. I don't want to measure cooked meat because it's probably got some pan sauce or seasoning on it, or it's chopped up and mixed into something and it's too big of a hassle.