Lentils - to log as raw or cooked.

Nisha_DK

Hello everyone.

Hoping someone will kindly be able to help.

I've just boiled split yellow peas 200g raw weight. Now, do I log the raw quantity or boiled quantity on mfp? Because boiled quantity depends on how much water you use (little water can make a dry dish and lots of water makes it a soupy dish) so I'm unsure how to log this. The carbs are so high (raw) and unsure if I'm doing this right.

Many thanks I'm advance :ohwell:

chezjuan

I weigh it raw, then, when done cooking, divide the finished product into portions, then divide the raw weight by the number of portions. So if I used 100g raw, divided into 4 portions, I would log 25g raw as my meal.

If you are eating the entire amount, then you can just log the raw weight, of course, as you are consuming all the lentils.

Nisha_DK

Ah ok. So I've made 200g raw weight and I'm having that between today and tomorrow so I'll just add it as 100g raw. Thanks for that.

So another question. Would the fibre / carb content change after it's cooked or does mfp that that into consideration (so it shows the cooked fibre and carb content). Hope that makes sense. I'm on a low carb diet for my pcos so really watching my carbs.

Many thanks.

lynn_glenmont

I suppose to be absolutely accurate you should weigh the total amount cooked and then divide whatever cooked weight in grams (combined lentils and liquid) you consume at a given time by 200, and record that percentage of the whole 200 grams dry lentils' calories and other nutrients. Or, if you have values for cooked peas, you could drain the amount of lentils you want to eat, reserving the liquid if you want to add it back in later, weigh or measure the volume of the drained, cooked lentils, and then record them using values for the cooked lentils.

The second approach is somewhat less accurate, since it doesn't account for variations in how much liquid your lentils have absorbed in the cooking process, which will vary based on cooking time, age of the lentils, and probably other factors I'm not aware of, but I doubt it's a huge difference. It is what I generally do, since I'll cook a batch and then use them later drained in other dishes; if I were making a big pot of soup or a stew/chili consistency with other ingredients, I would just use the recipe feature, add all of the ingredients to the recipe (i.e., 200 g dried lentils, etc.), then weigh the finished dish after it is done cooking and cooled somewhat, so that evaporation will be minimum. Then enter whatever number of servings you expect to get out of it. The recipe function will calculate the number of grams in each serving, and you can weigh your future servings cold in case you end up boiling some liquid off in the reheating.

lynn_glenmont

If you're consuming the cooking liquid, the carbs and proteins are not going to change from the dried values. If you don't consume the cooking liquid, you're probably losing some small amount of carbs and protein -- at least I can see there is particulate (bean residue, dissolved bean, whatever you want to call it) in the cooking liquid, presumably sloughed-off outer layers (not just the skin, which in my experience does not break up if it slides off the bean) of the bean (as opposed to some kind of leaching process). I don't know whether the proportion of fiber/digestible carbs/protein are the same in the residue (outer layer) as in the whole bean, but it doesn't look like enough matter to be overly concerned about.

Nisha_DK

Excellent thank you. I'll log as I found on mfp. I did panic a little with the carb content (57g per 100g portion!). But then after a quick online check the GI value is low so I'm happy with that.

Thanks again.