HELP!!! Do you weigh your meat cooked or uncooked?

euheide

You must NEVER WEIGH YOUR FOOD COOKED simply because the "nutrition data you are using", comes from "uncooked food". This means that, if you weight your food cooked, YOU ARE USING INCORRECT DATA

In other words, if you have a chicken breast that weighs 153 g, and you weight after cooking, and you get 115 g, the nutritional data for those 115 g you added will be wrong, because it's actually related to 115 g of uncooked meat.

So, this translates into a huge error in accounting anything from calories to fat, proteins etc in your diet, and it builds up every time you do it, every single day because you think that you're actually consuming less than you really are.

Scientists take uncooked food (with all the water weight, etc) and they weigh it, then they analyse it and quantify it's nutritional value. So this means the registered weight is the only possible reference (or connection) to the data retrieved.

The weight after cooked doesn't mean anything since no one has analysed it like that so you can't have any data from there anywhere (except for some scientific studies which data is not used for these ends anyway)

What good is counting calories if you're counting incorrectly?

This is only a matter of choice if you mean it's a choice between doing things right or wrong

by the way, I worked in a food analysis lab

adjones_21

I have always wondered this myself and this is what I have found.

http://www.skinny-bits.com/2010/04/weighing-your-food-raw-vs-cooked.html

efirkey

I weigh my meats cooked. I only have one scale and I don't want to contaminate it with raw meats especially chicken. I do wash it, but I don't want to wash it several times every time I eat.

sweetnlow30

I am sure raw is more accurate but I always use the cooked weight. I cook for the entire family then portion the dish out. There are both raw and cooked entries in the database so I just select the cooked entry. For example, raw boneless chicken is about 130 cals but the same weight cooked is 165 cals because it has less water weight. I figured they are already doing the math. It is close enough for me

edited for spelling

3dogsrunning

I'm with most people here - measure uncooked for meat, dry for pasta and rice. It's not always possible so I search for entries that reflect cooked if I don't do uncooked measurements.

As for your question on knowing which ones are right - I go to nutritiondata.self.com and compare. You'll find the the MFP entries come from there (the ones with an * are entered by others). I can't always tell on my phone so I use that site and choose the MFP entry that is the same. I now have a list if frequent foods I have verified.

passmetheducksauce

weigh your meats cooked unless you eat your meat uncooked, in that case you should weigh it uncooked.

SensuousLettuce

If you are consistent in your measuring (cooked vs uncooked) then it doesn't matter.

I always do post cooking. 100 grams pre-cooked may become 75 grams after cooking (or less) and that's just not enough food.

cmriverside

That's 10 cooked, 10 uncooked. Thank goodness we've solved another mystery.

DebbieLyn63

That's 10 cooked, 10 uncooked. Thank goodness we've solved another mystery.

Awesome :drinker:

jollyjoe321

I usually get precooked, but frozen stuff (cheap and easy )

I weigh it frozen, which I know is totally wrong!

ShannonMpls

If you weigh raw, search the database for raw.
If you weigh cooked, search the database for cooked.

Chicken breast, for example, has database entries for raw as well as roasted.

I personally weigh raw. Meat, in its raw state, is fairly consistent in terms of nutritional data. However, how one cooks meat can alter its weight significantly because of moisture loss (which is not the same as calorie loss).

For instance, 120g of raw chicken breast is about 132 calories. If I cook that chicken beautifully, so it's moist and awesome and delicious, it will weigh around 80 grams - also 132 calories. Now let's say I forget the chicken while it's cooking, and the result is dry and tasteless but still edible. Because I've cooked out every bit of moisture, it now weighs only 65 grams. If I log the cooked weight, I'm only logging 107 calories.

Despite the fact that I started off with 120 grams of raw chicken, 132 calories worth, if I weigh it (over)cooked, I'm going to be logging 107.

Maybe it's not a big deal to you, but with a more calorie dense piece of meat it might matter. It's quite easy for me to weigh it raw most of the time, so I do. In the event that I weigh it cooked, I always select the *cooked* version of chicken from the database.

SonicDeathMonkey80

melindasuefritz

COOKED

Joehenny

The weight on the package is it's raw weight. I weigh mines cooked and search for (cooked) meats in the databases

corgicake

Broke college boy doesn't buy gadgets for the sake of dieting. The meat counter weighs my meat raw so raw is how it's weighed.

__Di__

I am so confused! Am i supposed to weigh my chicken when its raw or cooked? If i weigh it when its raw 100g is not very much at all & if i weigh it cooked arnt I eating more than 100g because it would've been more than that before it was cooked?

Also how the heck are you supposed to know which nutritional information to trust? I've looked at the different listing for 100g cooked chicken breast on here & heaps of other websites and they all list different cals between 100 to 291 - for the same thing???

I always weigh before cooking and go by that. Packaging should contain nutritional info including the calories in that food, if it doesn't, I usually go by calories counts on MFP - generic.

mnapier3

I recently just read in an article, I believe Women's Health, advised readers to weigh after it was cooked.

mnapier3

I recently just read in an article, I believe Women's Health, advised readers to weigh after it was cooked.

msarro

Weigh raw. A sheet of butcher paper or plastic wrap helps keep your kitchen scale clean.