Do you weigh meat before or after cooking

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briabner
briabner Posts: 427 Member
in Food and Nutrition
I have a food scale and typically weigh out everything. I was curious should I weigh meat in particular before or after cooking? Any and all help would be appreciated....Thanks in advance

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  • chezjuan
    chezjuan Posts: 747 Member
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    It depends on the entry that you are using in MFP. If the entry is "Raw" then weigh before. If it states it is cooked (grilled, baked, fried, etc.) then you weigh after.

    I personally try to find the raw entries and weigh before I cook if I can.

    Edited to fix a typo...
  • heather_c_73
    heather_c_73 Posts: 9 Member
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    Personally, I weigh it AFTER cooking. No idea if that is what you SHOULD do, but it's easiest for me to weight something just as it goes on my plate... not before it goes on the grill and gets mixed up with everything else.

    I'm also interested to know if that's "correct".
  • KMasz
    KMasz Posts: 2,669 Member
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    In because I was wondering this just the other day
  • skylark94
    skylark94 Posts: 2,036 Member
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    Meat nutrition based on weight is generally calculated raw.
  • homeyjosey
    homeyjosey Posts: 138 Member
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    raw

    you can add calories depending on how the food is cooked also in general cooked meat weighs less than raw meat
  • SezxyStef
    SezxyStef Posts: 15,268 Member
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    uncooked when I can...everything uncooked.
  • Lifts4IceCream
    Lifts4IceCream Posts: 77 Member
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    For meat, I always weight after, because moisture will be cooked out, so 8oz of raw chicken will way 7oz after cooking. Veggies, if I am boiling, i weight before, because it will absorb some of that water and weigh more. If i steam or dry cook, then i weigh after to account for water loss.
  • NewMnky1
    NewMnky1 Posts: 264
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    I have always weighed cooked meats. Like the other posters, not sure if that is right, but that is what I have been doing.
  • Blueberry09
    Blueberry09 Posts: 821 Member
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    Interesting question!

    I usually take the weight it says on the package before cooking it. But then I do a whack of chicken breasts and cut them up after cooking them. I package those into 100g baggies and freeze them to take for lunch.

    I think I might be cheating myself here :smile: one way or the other!
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,867 Member
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    Unless othrewise specified, the calorie content of meat is per raw weight. You will note that certain things like bacon will say, "2 cooked slices" or some derivative thereof. Generally speaking though, it is the raw weight of the meat. If you weigh meat after the fact, your 4 oz or whatever is actually going to be maybe 5 or 6 oz raw as the fat and water cook off...considering the calorie content is per the raw weight, you would technically be over serving yourself if you indeed wanted a 4 oz serving...but the calories would probably be fairly negligible unless you were talking about a fatty piece of meat.
  • chezjuan
    chezjuan Posts: 747 Member
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    Unless othrewise specified, the calorie content of meat is per raw weight. You will note that certain things like bacon will say, "2 cooked slices" or some derivative thereof. Generally speaking though, it is the raw weight of the meat. If you weigh meat after the fact, your 4 oz or whatever is actually going to be maybe 5 or 6 oz raw as the fat and water cook off...considering the calorie content is per the raw weight, you would technically be over serving yourself if you indeed wanted a 4 oz serving...but the calories would probably be fairly negligible unless you were talking about a fatty piece of meat.

    I was looking at a Perdue chicken package the other day, and they had the values for both cooked and raw servings. It was a 10 calorie difference per 3 oz (raw). Probably burn that while eating the meat... :laugh:
  • jeanniescott
    jeanniescott Posts: 2 Member
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    I cook a lot of my meat from frozen so I weigh after cooking :happy:
  • brucedelaney
    brucedelaney Posts: 433 Member
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    I use the raw weight and make sure I'm using the raw stats, if I add oils or other ingredients I add those as a separate entry.

    The way I see it... If I sautee a steak in a skillet that starts as 10oz raw and I cook it medium rare down to say 8oz or cook it to 6oz and well done... There shouldn't be a caloric differnce. Losing moisture doesn't lower the calories but if you enter a cooked weight based on this the person who cooks it rare will be logging more calories then the person who cooks it Well for the exact same piece of meat.
  • briabner
    briabner Posts: 427 Member
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    Thanks so much for all the advice and knowledge. I tend to only eat pretty lean cuts of meat so I think I will most likely just continue weighing the meat after it has cooked as it doesn't seem like there would be a huge discrepancy. I guess I am already at a calorie deficit a few extra calories from the cooked meat should not make a huge difference.

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