Confused About Calories in Baked Chicken Breast

sapphire1166

I'm seeing wildly different calorie counts for baked chicken breast (no skin or marinades). Some sites say 100 calories per 3 oz, some say 200 per 3 oz. It even varies wildly in MFP. I'm on a 1270 calorie plan right now so every single calorie counts. What can I reasonably put down and assume I'm not greatly over/under estimating?

nicsflyingcircus

Chicken - Breast, meat only, cooked, roasted

Search that exact entry. Use it. Trust it. Be one with the force, young Jedi.

In general, look for the entries that have no asterisks (*) before them. You'll have to use the 100gram option (I weigh most of my meat in grams anyway, your food scale should switch back and forth from grams to ounces) and convert if you don't know the grams.

ETA: I took a look at your diary. Try very hard not to use entries that begin with "Homemade" unless they are YOUR recipe. You used two separate homemade chicken breast entries today and neither looked quite correct. One had a GRAM of sodium, heh.

afortunatedragon

Weight the raw chicken.
Depending on how you grill, cook, bake or roast it, it will lose different amounts of water.
So a done chicken breast can vary in its calories quite a bit.
Raw is raw.

nicsflyingcircus

Weight the raw chicken.
Depending on how you grill, cook, bake or roast it, it will lose different amounts of water.
So a done chicken breast can vary in its calories quite a bit.
Raw is raw.

This is true, and what I do as often as I can. However, if I am cooking a whole crockpot full of chicken breasts, or grilling 6-8 pieces of meat at a time (family of 6, including four ever so rapidly growing children, and... leftovers, if possible) that becomes a whole lot less feasible.

lemurcat12

Weight the raw chicken.
Depending on how you grill, cook, bake or roast it, it will lose different amounts of water.
So a done chicken breast can vary in its calories quite a bit.
Raw is raw.

This is true, and what I do as often as I can. However, if I am cooking a whole crockpot full of chicken breasts, or grilling 6-8 pieces of meat at a time (family of 6, including four ever so rapidly growing children, and... leftovers, if possible) that becomes a whole lot less feasible.

All this. Also if you do what I usually do, which is use bone-in chicken, which roasts much better IMO. What's absolutely important, though, is to use the correct cooked entry for cooked chicken and a raw entry for raw chicken. (The advice above is spot on as to how to do that.)