You say Fried Tomato... I say... wtf?

ElPatoLoco
ElPatoLoco Posts: 24 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Can anyone explain this please 'cos it seems like something of an anomaly... After sticking so rigidly to "The Plan" I fancied a treat, keeping within my calorie goals of course.. or at least so I thought until I tried to enter it into my calorie planner afterwards...

Medium tomato, fresh... 38 calories
Medium tomato, fresh, fried... 278 calories

Now a fried pork sausage is only 148 calories and a fried rasher of bacon only 94... so how the hell does a tomato gain 240 calories? even if you replaced the entire tomato with cooking oil (or even finest lard) I'm pretty sure it wouldn't suddenly gain that much? That's more calories than I have for my regular breakfast.... on that basis the two fried tomatoes I has this morning equates to more than half of the rest of the rest of the breakfast...

I even thought it could just be an error on MFP database... so I googled it... (where would we be without Google?) and I came up with the same result... except for one site that said fresh fried tomato.. 48 calories...

So which is it?

Is that little splash of colour that's so healthy on my salad really a ticking time bomb of obesity on my breakfast plate after a 60 second searing in vegetable oil?

Any nutritionists out there than can solve this little conundrum?

Replies

  • ohtobe140
    ohtobe140 Posts: 93
    Fried Tomatoes, southern style are usually in an egg buttermilk cornmeal coating and then fried in Crisco (preferable), it can easily add a lot of calories. But a seared tomato unbreaded wouldn't add as much. A real southern fried tomato, when perfect is worth it once in a while. YUM
  • blackcoffeeandcherrypie
    blackcoffeeandcherrypie Posts: 486 Member
    An accurate, if slightly tedious way to measure the calories of fried foods is to put oil in you pan, weigh it. Cook your food and wait for the pan to cool down a little so it doesn't melt your scale, now weigh it again. The difference is how many grams of oil you used, which can easily be converted to calories using MFP. Now save the whole thing as a meal so you don't have to go through all this again!

    Using this method I discovered that home made chips are actually not as bad as everyone makes out. Just 10g of fat per serving, less than the butter you'd spread on a sandwich!
  • Kittenbit
    Kittenbit Posts: 6 Member
    I would count the tomatoes and the oil I used (probably a teaspoon max), job done!

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