weight of food - cooked or raw?

ryovanovich

How do you guys calculate the weight/calories of food?

I noticed a large difference between raw and cooked chicken last night, and salmon a few nights ago.

I'm talking 30% decrease in weight, just from a pretty naked BBQ Grill cook. ie. 14oz of raw chicken breast turned into 10oz of cooked. depending on the MFP choice for chicken breast... that's several hundred calories. Salmon is an even bigger difference, and more calories per oz too!!

So which method would you guys use?

jaygreen55

If you search the data base you can usually find entries for both cooked and raw. I find cooked to be more useful because in the case of meats cooked with dry heat a great deal of the fat is cooked off reducing calories and in the case of fried foods fat is absorbed into the foods adding to the caloric content. Also, much of the weight loss in the food is just water hence the difference in weight in the example of chicken breast which is very low in fat

Danied13

I typically use the cooked weight as there is less fat/ water after the cooking process.

ryovanovich

Thanks for the feedback, guys... I was leaning that way, since it is really a lot of the 'Water weight"