When to measure a food

JoStumbo2824

Hello. Before I enter a baked potato in my tracker, do I log the weight before or after cooking.

AnnPT77

Either one can work, as long as you pick an entry from the food database that matches, i.e., a baked potato if it's baked already, or a raw potato if it's raw.

Raw is usually slightly more accurate, because water is lost during baking, so the potato gets lighter but the number of calories in the potato doesn't change. Therefore, 100g of baked potato has more calories than 100g of raw potato, because more of the raw potato's weight is water. Potatoes of different sizes or different amounts of baking time/temperature may lose more or less water. Therefore, I'd personally use raw weight when it's practical, but not obsess about it if it's not.

One note to be careful about with other cooked/raw choices: Some things like (for example) roasted vegetables may be listed as roasted, but those would often have some oil added to them before roasting. We don't know how much oil was added, and oil is calorie dense. In those cases, I'd personally strongly prefer raw weight, and add weight of the oil as a separate item.