Cooked vs uncooked

torikins87

Ok, I've looked into how to weigh food cooked vs uncooked and apparently the best route is uncooked. Can anyone please explain why this is the case. I am very confused. I seen on a website that the calories and all that will be different with cooked vs uncooked. Here's the thing, i'm not going to eat something raw though. So, why put it in my macros as raw? Am I making sense. Here is the site I got the info from. If you scroll down to number 6 a bit, this is where I get confused. https://danielharrod.com/7-mistakes-people-make-when-tracking-their-food/?fbclid=IwAR1GMqk9jHzODm-KlSVMLx-ClBb41fUabntRwdmkCaGYlaRf1jo51Z5jJ1g

Nony_Mouse

Because food loses moisture during the cooking process, or in the case of things like pasta and rice, gains moisture, and the amount of moisture loss/gain is variable. Weighing uncooked gives the greatest accuracy.

Basically, exactly what the website you linked says. It doesn't matter that you're not eating it raw. If you eat all of whatever you cook, it has the same calories and macros cooked as it did when it was raw, the weight is just different.

Bluetail6

...... "When selecting between the cooked and uncooked method, it is important to consider:

Nearly all nutrition labels now use the uncooked method
How long you cook foods for will vary slightly each time and affect the cooked weight
Weighing individual components of mixed meals
It is a lot easier for certain cooked foods to get ‘lost’ on the way to the food scale and end up in your mouth
As a result, it is worth weighing foods before cooking and calculating serving sizes based on uncooked nutrition values.

If you don’t, just make sure the food you are inputting is correlated to whether you weighed it raw or cooked......"


A couple of things I would consider. First, look at the package of what you are cooking (or not, if it is already prepared) and go from there. Next, I always use the USDA Foods List (Google it.) On the USDA site you will find most items stated as cooked or raw, among many other things.

Please be careful when using the nutritional information already entered in MFP. I have found many of the entries to be outdated, or just, well, wrong. Not to say that they all are. Anyway with the new FDA nutritional requirements it is important to check. A simple example is the mgs of the micronutrient potassium. Food labels in the past were not required to input this information (they just used percentages), now they are. It is one of the nutrients I track. Therefore, it is important to me to know.

Do understand this is my personal opinion only. I tend to check almost everything. You don't have to do that.

I think you raise an excellent question. I also believe you will get some diverse and excellent responses. Try not to overthink it. Especially, in the beginning. It takes time, and effort to track. Something, I believe you will not regret.

It is an interesting article, by the way.

torikins87

Thank you both for your responses! Unfortunately in that graph, the protein and cals are in fact different from cooked to raw which is why I am so confused. In the graph on number 6, it states that 100g of cooked chicken breast is 28g of protein and 145 cals. For raw the 100g of chicken breast is 23g of protein and 120 cals. So, I am not understanding why enter our foods raw when the nutrition will be quite a bit different?

Lietchi

The total nutrition of the portion doesn't change, the nutrition per 100gr changes because the weight of the portion changes.

And since there can be differences in how we cook our food (e.g. cook a chicken breast for longer and it will contain less moisture, and therefore contain more nutrients per 100gr) the nutritional values given for cooked food will be more approximate/less precise than those given for raw food.

lynn_glenmont

torikins87 wrote: »

Thank you both for your responses! Unfortunately in that graph, the protein and cals are in fact different from cooked to raw which is why I am so confused. In the graph on number 6, it states that 100g of cooked chicken breast is 28g of protein and 145 cals. For raw the 100g of chicken breast is 23g of protein and 120 cals. So, I am not understanding why enter our foods raw when the nutrition will be quite a bit different?

If you put 100 g of raw chicken in the oven, when you take the chicken out it will weigh less than 100 g, but it will still have the 23 g of protein it had when you put it in the oven.

If you want 100 g of cooked chicken, you will have to put more than 100 g of raw chicken in the oven. Using the numbers you've supplied, it looks like whatever cooking method they're assuming would require you to start with about 120 g of raw chicken to get 100 g of cooked chicken.

120 g of raw chicken would have 28 g of protein and 145 cals.
100 g of cooked chicken would 23 g of protein and 120 cals.

BarbaraHelen2013

I think what you’re missing is that the chicken breast that weighs 100g after cooking started out as something like 120g before it was cooked.

And the chicken breast that is weighed at 100g when raw will weigh maybe 85g once it has been cooked. It is less chicken than 100g now it is cooked. The nutrients are the same per gram, you just have fewer grams now it is cooked.

torikins87

ohhhhh I think i understand. I think the graph was showing the difference between the two. lol i never took that into consideration. Oy I feel stupid now lol. Thank you all so much!