How do you figure?

cin8214

I want to make sure I am calculating my calories correctly...tonight, I had 1/2 of cooked long grain rice. On the bag it states 1/4 dry rice is 160 calories. I Google calories for cooked rice and it states 205 calories for 1 cup cooked rice. So did just intake 320 calories or 102.5 calories of rice?

lesdarts180

It would have been more sensible to measure your rice before you cooked it and used the label on your package to determine the calories - but that's a tip for next time.
Cooking food can introduce a lot of unknowns so measure raw wherever possible (and preferably, weigh it)
If you measure it cooked then use the figure for "cooked rice"

ninerbuff

205 calories. Rice expands when it's cooked.


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Lietchi

ninerbuff wrote: »

205 calories. Rice expands when it's cooked.


A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
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Been in fitness for 35+ years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

OP only ate half a cup I would say 102.5 calories.
And I would weigh dry next time, more accurate than volume measurements and cooked.

AnnPT77

You can find the values you need right in MFP. Use more words to do the search, not just "rice".

I agree that weighing dry before cooking will be more accurate, but it's too late for that now, so use a cooked rice entry.

I won't belabor the reasons why it's true, but the database entries that have names only a bureaucrat could love are somewhat more likely to be accurate. They will usually have 1 cup as the default quantity, but lots of different quantity types (both weights and measures) in the drop-down list after you select the food. They won't say USDA, a brand name, or "generic". They usually have green checks, but not always.

For rice, I'd use these:

Rice - White, long-grain, regular, cooked
Rice, white, long-grain, regular, raw, enriched

If that wasn't the type of rice, you can find similar bureaucratic-name entries for brown rice, short-grain, etc.

I'm not saying other entries are bad or wrong. I'm just saying those kinds of entries are usually right.

kshama2001

Get a food scale, and then you don't have to think about how tightly to pack cups of food (However, while I weigh cooked rice, I do use a cup for raw rice, as it does not contract.)

Similar to the entry Ann mentioned above, I use "Rice, white, long-grain, regular, cooked, unenriched, with salt." The USDA thinks 1 cup of cooked rice weight 158 grams and is 205 calories.

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. A green check mark for USER-created entries just means enough people have upvoted the entry - it is not necessarily correct.

To find ADMIN entries for whole foods, I get the syntax from the USDA database and paste that into MFP. All ADMIN entries from the USDA will have weights as an option BUT there is a glitch whereby sometimes 1g is the option but the values are actually for 100g. This is pretty easy to spot though, as when added the calories are 100x more than is reasonable.

https://fdc.nal.usda.gov

Use the “SR Legacy” tab - that's what MFP used to pull in entries.

Note: any MFP entry that includes "USDA" was USER entered.

For packaged foods, I verify the label against what I find in MFP. (Alas, you cannot just scan with your phone and assume what you get is correct. Note: scanning is mostly only available with Premium these days.)