When weighing fruit...

jordymils

I apologise if this is an incredibly silly and/or obvious question, but when weighing fruit do you only weigh the 'edible' part? ie; do you peel a banana or take out the core of an apple or pip from a peach before weighing??
Peeling a banana before weighing seems reasonable given that there is a lot of peel, but then it seems like the same should be done for all other fruits, too...

And also, if I weigh out something like sweet potato when it is raw, and log it in MFP as raw sweet potato, I assume that would be the same as weighing and logging it as a cooked food? I often find it easier (and less messy) to weigh the raw ingredient and log it as such. Also because I'm usually so excited to eat that I forget about the weighing part in between cooking and eating...
I'm just not sure if the carbs, protein etc value of veggies changes when cooked (with no fat)...

Thanks!!

heybales

You indeed only count what you eat, the nutritional info isn't based on what you wouldn't eat. Like a coconut or pineapple husk/shell.

Weigh before cooking, because nutritional info on raw foods includes water weight you could cook out, or actually increase depending on item.

Picture:
You weigh sweet potato 500 grams - there's calories and info for that much.

You now cook it, and weigh it after - 400 grams. But the only thing lost is water weight, same calories and info.
But if you did the math (20% off weight therefore 20% off calories ect) you'd be wrong, and eating more than you think.

That's why there is rarely cooked items that can be weighed raw. Only manual entries would do that foolishness - they have no idea how much water you cooked out - besides the fact they probably did it wrong anyway.

Same thing applies to any prepared meals meant to be cooked.
250 g per serving, 2 serving per container, 500 g container, right.
You cook that thing in the oven, then weigh out your 250 g instead of just taking half of it, and the other person will probably get 100 g because of the water that cooked out. And you will be eating 1.75 servings, not 1.

jordymils

Makes perfect sense. Will keep doing what I've been doing then. Thanks