Pasta weight pre or post cook?

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stefabc
stefabc Posts: 1
in Food and Nutrition
Hi,

When adding an entry in to the food diary for "pasta" and you enter the grams weight yourself, do you take the dry or wet weight of the pasta? Ie, before or after it's cooked?

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  • 126siany
    126siany Posts: 1,386 Member
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    Generally speaking, the nutrition information on the package is for the food as it came in the box unless it says "As Prepared". So with pasta, it's almost always dry weight.

    There are some entries in the database for cooked pasta, but these are usually estimates. The amount of water the pasta absorbs varies both by the type of pasta and how people prepare it. It's always the most accurate to weigh it prior to cooking if possible.
  • wizzybeth
    wizzybeth Posts: 3,573 Member
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    The Barilla Website may help.

    http://www.barilla.com/faq?p=measuring or this one: http://www.hungry-girl.com/askhg/show/pasta-portions

    My difficulty is in measuring spaghetti once it's cooked into my own portion size unless I cook it by itself. It's easy to measure out 2 oz dry but when you have a whole batch of cooked spaghetti or elbows...
  • Jacob021
    Jacob021 Posts: 24 Member
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    It is more accurate to weight before cooking, as after cooking depends on how much water was absorbed

    However, this is not very practical for me, as when cooking pasta (or rice etc) it is not just for me, but for the enitre family (and they don't weight their food)

    So I use the "cooked" weight
  • _funrungirl
    _funrungirl Posts: 145 Member
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    The Barilla Website may help.

    http://www.barilla.com/faq?p=measuring or this one: http://www.hungry-girl.com/askhg/show/pasta-portions

    My difficulty is in measuring spaghetti once it's cooked into my own portion size unless I cook it by itself. It's easy to measure out 2 oz dry but when you have a whole batch of cooked spaghetti or elbows...

    I'm not a pasta eater, but was curious enough to click the link.

    If you can figure out how many spaghetti strands or elbow pasta are in 2oz dry, then you can make sure you only serve yourself that amount.

    Its probably a pain to do it this way, but that way you would be 100% sure of how much you are eating.
  • erickirb
    erickirb Posts: 12,293 Member
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    It is more accurate to weight before cooking, as after cooking depends on how much water was absorbed

    However, this is not very practical for me, as when cooking pasta (or rice etc) it is not just for me, but for the enitre family (and they don't weight their food)

    So I use the "cooked" weight

    Well this is simple, weigh out the total before and after cooking then you know what % of the total you ate. If it weighed 100 grams before cooking and 200 after and you ended up eating 80 grams cooked that would be 40% (80/200) so to get cals you would take 40% of the 100 gram nutrition info.
  • wizzybeth
    wizzybeth Posts: 3,573 Member
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    I would eat what I can fit into a measuring cup....

    Which is a pitifully small amount. :sad:
  • 4daluvof_candice
    4daluvof_candice Posts: 483 Member
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    I measure out 2oz dry as the package says; then cook. There's your serving...
  • helenarriaza
    helenarriaza Posts: 519 Member
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    I would eat what I can fit into a measuring cup....

    Which is a pitifully small amount. :sad:

    Weigh it, measuring cups are tricky stuff and you must consider the variants.

    I weigh in all the ingredients pre- cooked (example: pasta with ground beef + canned tomato sauce)

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