Weighing cooked vs uncooked

skinniestminniest

Hello!

I was just wondering how everyone weighs their food - cooked vs uncooked.

My husband and I are planning on making homemade pizza tonight with lots of veggies. We usually sautee mushrooms and onions. My plans was to weigh these raw before we throw them in the pan. After they're cooked, I feel as though it might be messier to weigh them?

What is the difference between cooked and uncooked? Is the weight majorly different?

This is probably a stupid question, but I'd like to be as accurate as I possibly can and would love everyone's advice/opinion.

Thanks so much!!

NCchar130

Cooked will weigh less because a lot of the water will be cooked out of them. On the other hand, mushrooms are so low in calories, it probably won't make that much of a difference. But for things such as a baked potato, the difference in the weight before and after baking is significant so I always use the cooked weight.

WBB55

The weight before and after cooking varies by food.

Weighing raw is what I do. But there's entries for cooked, too. Just be careful to include the oil or cooking method.

diannethegeek

I weigh and log all of my food raw. If you choose to weigh it after cooking then be sure to select the appropriate entry in the database.

Grammanut

Maybe this will help?? It's a curriculum but there's a section on weighing food. If not maybe there's more on the CDC's website that can advise

http://www.cdc.gov/diabetes/prevention/pdf/curriculum.pdf

__freckles__

In...because I'm interested in this as well. Especially for meat.

I've always heard raw is better. But sometimes that just ain't gonna fly.

onefortyone

I believe that raw weight is probably your best bet - yes, cooking releases water, but water has no calories anyway, so the weight will go down but the calories should stay the same. I have read that cooked food is easier for your body to digest, so you don't use up as many calories to digest cooked foods (but that is probably minimal, like 1-2 calories per day). When in doubt I go by raw weight + what the USDA website says about that particular item.

sympha01

I always weigh before cooking and use the uncooked database entry because weighing cooked food is messy and using the uncooked database entry is, if not more accurate, more conservative.