Cooked or not cooked?

FannySnaith

Hi, when measuring foods.. I looked up lentils and it gives cals etc for 100g. Is the cooked or uncooked please?

harper16

It should be weighed uncooked. If it doesn't specify I'd try and find one that says uncooked.

wilson10102018

Weigh everything but vegetables, rice and pasta cooked and find entries that give you calories of the cooked item.

kshama2001

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.

Entries pulled from the USDA database use words like "raw" or "cooked" when appropriate:



The USDA changed the platform for their database in 2019 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.

Strudders67

wilson10102018 wrote: »

Weigh everything but vegetables, rice and pasta cooked and find entries that give you calories of the cooked item.

I'd say weigh everything uncooked - and find entries that refer to uncooked. Length of cooking time and whether cooked in water or oil vs grilled will change the weight of the end product and may not match the length of time / cooking method of the entry you are selecting. The raw item will always be just that.

wilson10102018

Strudders67 wrote: »

wilson10102018 wrote: »

Weigh everything but vegetables, rice and pasta cooked and find entries that give you calories of the cooked item.

I'd say weigh everything uncooked - and find entries that refer to uncooked. Length of cooking time and whether cooked in water or oil vs grilled will change the weight of the end product and may not match the length of time / cooking method of the entry you are selecting. The raw item will always be just that.

That would only be true if you ate everything you put in the pan after cooking. Mostly what stays in the pan is fats and oils. If you are not drinking the fat from the pan, you are logging it but not ingesting it at around 9 calories per gram. That represents about half of the calories in salmon for example.

MichelleMcKeeRN

I find adding raw or uncooked after whatever I am looking up helps me find a good entry. For example chicken breast raw or brown rice uncooked. I prefer to measure before I cook!

lynn_glenmont

I cook large batches of legumes (lentils, beans, peas) and freeze them in small batches. It would be too difficult to use raw weights and then have to figure percentages of the cooked large batches, and then figure out each small batch, and label it, and deal with what to do if I end up using the small batch in a larger dish that serves multiple people ....

I use cooked entries drawn from the USDA database (e.g., Lentils, mature seeds, cooked, boiled, without salt [or with salt, as the case may be]), as in kshama2001's post above. Legumes make up a substantial part of my diet, and I've been doing this for nearly seven years, and it hasn't throw off my results.

Strudders67

wilson10102018 wrote: »

Strudders67 wrote: »

wilson10102018 wrote: »

Weigh everything but vegetables, rice and pasta cooked and find entries that give you calories of the cooked item.

I'd say weigh everything uncooked - and find entries that refer to uncooked. Length of cooking time and whether cooked in water or oil vs grilled will change the weight of the end product and may not match the length of time / cooking method of the entry you are selecting. The raw item will always be just that.

That would only be true if you ate everything you put in the pan after cooking. Mostly what stays in the pan is fats and oils. If you are not drinking the fat from the pan, you are logging it but not ingesting it at around 9 calories per gram. That represents about half of the calories in salmon for example.

Some of what is in the pan also contains water or juice that has come out of whatever you are cooking. As it's impossible to say what percentage is what / how much has been absorbed, I log whatever I used which may not equate to what I ate. However, I generally use the least amount of oil I can when cooking- and typically pour the contents of the pan over my dish as a sauce or gravy. It's still true that water or oil absorption affects the end weight though and, as you may have cooked for longer and your food item may have absorbed more or less than whoever posted the entry, I'd argue that it's not reliably accurate to used 'cooked' weights. The pre-cooked weight is accurate.

wilson10102018

Strudders67 wrote: »

wilson10102018 wrote: »

Strudders67 wrote: »

wilson10102018 wrote: »

Weigh everything but vegetables, rice and pasta cooked and find entries that give you calories of the cooked item.

I'd say weigh everything uncooked - and find entries that refer to uncooked. Length of cooking time and whether cooked in water or oil vs grilled will change the weight of the end product and may not match the length of time / cooking method of the entry you are selecting. The raw item will always be just that.

That would only be true if you ate everything you put in the pan after cooking. Mostly what stays in the pan is fats and oils. If you are not drinking the fat from the pan, you are logging it but not ingesting it at around 9 calories per gram. That represents about half of the calories in salmon for example.

Some of what is in the pan also contains water or juice that has come out of whatever you are cooking. As it's impossible to say what percentage is what / how much has been absorbed, I log whatever I used which may not equate to what I ate. However, I generally use the least amount of oil I can when cooking- and typically pour the contents of the pan over my dish as a sauce or gravy. It's still true that water or oil absorption affects the end weight though and, as you may have cooked for longer and your food item may have absorbed more or less than whoever posted the entry, I'd argue that it's not reliably accurate to used 'cooked' weights. The pre-cooked weight is accurate.

That is probably because you only cook vegetables.

If you were to broil a piece of salmon, you would find the pan full of oil, no water, no juices. And, the oil would count at 9 calories per gram or about half of the entire calories count of the raw salmon. Of course, if the raw salmon is going into a dish where the oil will not be left in the pan, it is just as reliable to measure it raw. It would be true with anything wherein the fat is rendered out in cooking. And, this is important because it happens only in the most calorie dense foods, pork, beef salmon, etc. Who cares what happens with a tomato? Measure it raw or cooked. It won't matter either way.

sgt1372

Since you don't eat the rice til it's cooked and there is no standard measure of how much uncooked rice equals the amount cooked, I just use the cooked rice estimate which is about 200 cals/ cup regardless of the type of rice that you are eating.

White long/medium/short grain, brown, wild, basmati, jadmine . . . whatever. The cal estimate is always sbout 200 cals/cup cooked.

There's no need to make calorie counting more complicated than need be.

Strudders67

[/quote] That is probably because you only cook vegetables. [/quote]

Not sure where you got that from @wilson10102018. I sometimes roast vegetables, but at least 75% of what I cook in oil is meat.


As it goes, I use a cooked rice entry, but that's because I cook it in bulk and freeze in portions. I only eat 100g at a time and the calorie difference between raw and cooked, for that amount, is likely to be negligible. With anything else, be that meat, fish, lentils, potatoes, whatever, if there's a raw option available in the database, that's what I select. There can be no dispute about how much it has/has not changed due to the cooking process if you log the raw ingredient. If I cook in oil, I measure how much oil I've put in the pan, regardless of how much of it will end up on my plate. However, you can select / log as you see fit. If you're losing at the rate you intend or, if like me you're maintaining at the weight you want to maintain at, it doesn't matter.