logging food..cooked or raw? also, marinade question

CeleryStalker

When we log our food for the day, are we supposed to be using the raw weight or the cooked weight. For instance, I may start off with 8oz of chicken breast, but when it's cooked, it's only about 5.75oz or so. Which is the accurate weight?

Also, when you marinate your food, you obviously arent going to count the entire marinade recipe in your food journal. Is there a good rule of thumb for accounting for marinades? I've heard some folks will measure what they have to start with (say, 1.5 cups of marinade), then measure again after they've taken the meat out of the marinade, then divide the difference among the number of servings/piece of meat pulled out, but not only does that sound like a pain in the butt, I'm certain when I throw chicken in a bag to marinate, the chicken is adding its own packing water/blood/etc to the mix, so this method isn't very accurate IMO. Any suggestions?

CaraRadz

Personally, I log my meat at its raw weight. You'll notice in the database that meat is often labeled as either a cooked or raw weight, so in theory you could pick whichever you prefer. I buy perdue chicken breasts, and the nutritional information on the package includes the raw to cooked weight conversion.

As for the marinade part of your question, I only put a limited amount of marinade on the meat before baking it (generally about 2 tablespoons per 8oz of meat), and I just log all of the marinade even though some of it is obviously left in the pan.