Ground beef weight

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roarkesdrift
roarkesdrift Posts: 37 Member
in Food and Nutrition
When logging a beef burger, do you use the raw beef weight or log the cooked weight?

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  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 33,958 Member
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    Type "raw" into the database and you get raw weight. I always use raw for meats.

  • serindipte
    serindipte Posts: 1,557 Member
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    I use raw when possible, but choose the appropriate cooked entry when I have no other choice.
  • AlabasterVerve
    AlabasterVerve Posts: 3,171 Member
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    This is what I use: Beef - Ground, 80% lean meat / 20% fat, patty, cooked, broiled (hamburger)

    For hamburgers I use the cooked weight just because I think it's probably more accurate than the "yield from 1/4 pound raw meat" option for hamburger patties under the raw option.
  • wilson10102018
    wilson10102018 Posts: 1,306 Member
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    Never use raw unless you are gonna drink the fat from the skillet or save the fat from the grill and eat it. Otherwise you are logging calories you did not eat. Of course, if you are using the ground beef in a dish like Lasagna, you should weigh it raw.
  • Carlos_421
    Carlos_421 Posts: 5,132 Member
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    Weighing/logging the raw weight is more accurate due to the fact that the weight after cooking will differ based on how it's cooked and for how long. The drier it gets, the lighter it gets but there's still just as much meat there.
  • Carlos_421
    Carlos_421 Posts: 5,132 Member
    edited March 2020
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    wilson10102018 wrote: »
    Never use raw unless you are gonna drink the fat from the skillet or save the fat from the grill and eat it. Otherwise you are logging calories you did not eat. Of course, if you are using the ground beef in a dish like Lasagna, you should weigh it raw.

    On the flip side, logging the cooked weight could cause you to log fewer calories than you consume if you cook your meat drier than what was used to create the entry in MFP.
    Better to log the raw weight and not eat all the fat than to log less than you actually ate.
  • deannalfisher
    deannalfisher Posts: 5,600 Member
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    there should be a beef ground raw 80/20 that you can use (or whatever percentage fat you pick) - those take into account how much you would lose when draining fat after cooking
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,115 Member
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    I would say that it depends on the context:
    - if I were preparing the burger myself, I would log the raw weight
    - if I were eating at a restaurant I would use a cooked entry in the database, since I wouldn't know how much the raw burger weighed
  • hmhill17
    hmhill17 Posts: 283 Member
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    I always check the USDA site for an entry that has a cooking method. And then pick the one that's the highest calories. I think it's more accurate than using the MFP recipe builder when it comes to proteins.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,898 Member
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    All meat entries that MFP pulled from the USDA database will have raw or cooked in the description, so pick the one that is appropriate. When the fat is drained, such as when I grill a burger, I use a cooked entry. I don't drain fat in casserole/chili type dishes, so use a raw entry for that.

    Unfortunately, the green check marks in the MFP database are used for both user-created entries and admin-created entries that MFP pulled from the USDA database. To find admin entries for whole foods, I get the syntax from the USDA database and paste that into MFP.

    The USDA recently changed the platform for their database and it is unfortunately a little more difficult to use. I uncheck everything but SR Legacy - that seems to be what MFP used to pull in entries.

    Note: any MFP entry that includes "USDA" was user entered.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,898 Member
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    Carlos_421 wrote: »
    wilson10102018 wrote: »
    Never use raw unless you are gonna drink the fat from the skillet or save the fat from the grill and eat it. Otherwise you are logging calories you did not eat. Of course, if you are using the ground beef in a dish like Lasagna, you should weigh it raw.

    On the flip side, logging the cooked weight could cause you to log fewer calories than you consume if you cook your meat drier than what was used to create the entry in MFP.
    Better to log the raw weight and not eat all the fat than to log less than you actually ate.

    I assume the USDA entry "Beef, ground, 85% lean meat / 15% fat, patty, cooked, broiled" refers to medium rare as that is the proper way to cook a burger ;)
  • vaman
    vaman Posts: 253 Member
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    AlabasterVerve wrote: »
    This is what I use: Beef - Ground, 80% lean meat / 20% fat, patty, cooked, broiled (hamburger)

    For hamburgers I use the cooked weight just because I think it's probably more accurate than the "yield from 1/4 pound raw meat" option for hamburger patties under the raw option.


    That's the method that I use too. After all the amount that you cook the hamburger will have a definite effect on the actual calories of what you consume.

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