Weighing Food Raw or Cooked?

tellybelle

What is the correct weigh to weigh your food (especially meat) to ensure you are getting the correct serving size for the nutritional information? Weigh the food raw or cooked?

Pandorian

Raw. See almost any restaraunt menu and they very clearly specify their 1/4 lb burger weight refers to raw weight. Different cooking styles will take out more or less moisture.
Only way to get pasta etc to weigh the "same" for tracking whether you cook al dente or to the point of falling apart is start with raw weight, if you know you put in 1 cup of raw it doesn't matter "how much" your cooked end product makes, you started with a standard weight.

rockerbabyy

it depends on what im making, but i usually weigh cooked, and make sure the entry i use doesnt say "raw" in the description

tellybelle

ok but say I am measuring a cup of something....like frozen spinach, for example to add to my diary
I may have a cup measured out before cooking but it then "cooks down" so much during the process that I don't know how to get back that original cup since it is in with the whole bag now that I am cooking for my family. I know the cooked cup will have a lot more in it than the original raw cup

Does that make sense?

Pandorian

Something like spinach is only 70 calories? for 2 cups raw, so the full pack of frozen isn't going to add that much calories, just count the full container for ingredients like that, or use the recipe feature in MFP, found on the same tab you enter food under, click recipes, create new recipe and enter the ingredients, allow the system to calculate total calories for you on a per serving basis. Easier than weighing out a cup of something and putting it back in with the rest when it reduces so much.