calorie question or thoughts

sandy2006

Does the calorie count of a food change after its cooked? Example: ground beef, the label says a certain number of calories, so after you brown it in a pan does it change or stay the same? I also noticed on the MFP foods eggs cooked in a microwave have less calories than scrambled in a pan. thoughts?

Kirsty_UK

duplicate post sorry

Kirsty_UK

I expect the scrambled eggs includes the addition of milk etc.

I dont think the calorie count changes, but the nutritional value will do - in terms of vitamins that are destroyed in over cooked veg etc. I log all my food as their raw value, then add whatever I use to cook it, so usually for browning mince, it will include the raw mince + the cooking oil.

One thing to be careful of though is the difference between pre-cooked and post-cooked weight. 75g of pasta weighed before cooking, is not the same amount of pasta if you measure out 75g after cooking. Check the packet to see if it's dried weight, or for example with tins of tuna, drained weight.

quara

If you drain the fat after browning, then yes it would, otherwise I don't think so. I try to calculate most of my calories based on the precooked weight, because I would think after cooking the weight could vary (depending on how long you cooked it and how much moisture evaporated, or was absorbed). Two people could cook the same thing for different lengths of time and that might affect the weight, possibly! (i.e., a steak mostly rare, or an over-done steak would be different weights even if they started out the same size.)

ClaireShepherd

As long you enter the correct food that you weighed e.g. cooked or uncooked then its fine.

Cooking food often dehydrates or hydrates depending on what you are cooking.

Pasta is the perfect example, but most foods you are not adding water to will become more dense so that there are more calories per unit of weight.

Just keep it consistent weight raw enter raw etc and you'll be fine

sugarbone

Cooked food does not change its nutritional value unless you cook it in things, like oil or butter.

Also sometimes its tricky with water, ie when I bake tofu it loses ~1/4 of its weight from dehydration. The nutrition label should specify with these kinds of foods (and the opposite with pasta) whether the calorie value is wet or dry, cooked or uncooked, etc.

Kirsty_UK

Cooked food does not change its nutritional value unless you cook it in things, like oil or butter.

calories no, but I thought raw vegetables contained more vitamins than cooked?

quara

Cooked food does not change its nutritional value unless you cook it in things, like oil or butter.

calories no, but I thought raw vegetables contained more vitamins than cooked?

I think it depends on the vegetable... I think a lot lose nutrients and vitamins the longer they're cooked, but there might be a few where the nutrients become a bit more digestible. I did a quick search and found this:

"In the case of some vegetables, cooking can actually increase the variety of nutrients that get released inside our digestive tract. The cooking of onions or the roasting of garlic are good examples. Onions and garlic are both members of the Allium family of vegetables. Most vegetables in this family have unusual amounts of sulfur-containing compounds that help protect our health. Heat actually increases the variety of sulfur-containing substances found in onions and garlic since it triggers some chemical reactions that create variations in those sulfur compounds."

I don't know if that's true! But food for thought.

sandy2006

Thanks!