Nutritional Information for Beef Back Ribs

midnight_mariposa
midnight_mariposa Posts: 13 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Hi, all. I'm trying to figure this out and it has me stumped at the moment. We purchased some beef back ribs at the grocery store two days ago as they were on sale for an extremely good price. When I went to look at the nutritional information today, though, I was floored in the amount of calories listed for 4 oz of ribs (on average about 500 calories). There are several entries for beef back ribs, and I looked on nutritiondata.self.com as well, and all the calories kind of match up. However, I just don't see how that's possible given the small amount of meat (including fat) available on each rib. Does anyone here happen to know whether the nutritional information for these ribs is calculated for the meat only? Or is the weight supposed to include the bone too? Considering you could eat 1 lb of 73% lean ground beef for around 1600 calories (yuck), it doesn't seem right that 1 lb of ribs including the weight of the bones would be even more.

Any ideas or advice here? We're going to eat them anyway, and I'm not going to stress too much about the numbers being weird, but I do like my data to be as accurate as possible. I don't want to add something that's incredibly inaccurate if I can help it. Thanks for any help you can provide! :)

Replies

  • ker95texas
    ker95texas Posts: 106 Member
    I've found that I go to the USDA site a lot , rather than just depending on the MFP database.

    Lots of options for trim, etc... http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods

    Enjoy your ribs! :drinker:
  • sc003ro
    sc003ro Posts: 227 Member
    they are marbled in fat. compare it Bacon not ground beef....big difference
  • MeadowSong
    MeadowSong Posts: 171 Member
    I would imagine that they have included all the fat, but none of the bone, in their calculations. Many people do eat the fat (yuk), but people don't eat bones. I'd skip all the fat and if you could weigh it and see just how much you were eating, then you'd have it (I'd still not count it for "lean" beef, prob 'regular' ground beef, if you've done a good job of picking the fat off). If you can't weigh it, (oh, dear, I'm going to start a ruckus with this one) then compare the size with say, a 4 oz burger patty.

    Guesstimating can work if you're not trying to cheat. Honestly, that's all we're able to do with the calories we burn in a day--do the best we can to get close and tailor it a bit as we see where it's taking us.
  • sophiek1964
    sophiek1964 Posts: 79 Member
    I have had the same problem trying to figure out the calorie count and, like you, I eat them anyways because they are freaking delicious! For myself, I put 500 calories for 4 ribs which includes the barbeque sauce. When I tear the meat off of 4 baby back ribs, there's actually quite a bit of meat on my plate. Enjoy your meal!
  • midnight_mariposa
    midnight_mariposa Posts: 13 Member
    I've found that I go to the USDA site a lot , rather than just depending on the MFP database.

    Lots of options for trim, etc... http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods

    Enjoy your ribs! :drinker:

    Thanks! It does seem to be that the bone-in ones have lower calories per oz/gram than the ones that don't say bone-in. I just wish they'd say it for everything.
  • midnight_mariposa
    midnight_mariposa Posts: 13 Member
    they are marbled in fat. compare it Bacon not ground beef....big difference

    From what I've read, beef back ribs seem to be anywhere from 27-32% fat. That's why I was comparing it to ground beef that was 73% lean (27% fat). A pound of bacon has about the same amount of calories as most of the nutritional sites say a pound of ribs has, but, it's unclear whether or not it's bone-in ribs. Hence my confusion.

    So at this point, I'm just going with the USDA stuff for bone-in ribs. A lot of the MFP items, even if they say bone-in, seem to be for meat only, adding to the confusion.

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