Should I weigh food raw or cooked?

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USDA - debatable IMO. There is indeed a raw entry but also a cooked - let's say grilled as an example.
I am eating grilled chicken, not raw chicken. Weight raw will be higher due to meat + liquids (water, left over blood, etc...). When grilling your chicken breast your weight will decrease due to loss in liquids and some of the fat will melt too - hence why I am tracking as cooked as opposed to raw.
Anyhow - endless topic - to each his own I guess - as long as you remain consistent in what you do and your calories are aligned with goals and results everybody is fine!

Yep. I think raw is best where possible for similar reasons to pasta--if you routinely cook meat more it will weigh less than average and thus you will be underestimating your calories. While commercial meat of some sorts can be misleading when raw (injected with water) I don't personally buy those meats, but they also have specific package information that will be for raw usually.

But like I said, sometimes cooked is unavoidable--I eat lots of bone-in cuts, so am quite familiar with the cooked entries. I think we agree that what's important is that you don't use raw entries for cooked weights or vice versa. Otherwise the error should be pretty minor (or at least outweighed by other things, such as that calories for a particular cut are going to vary anyway).

All this raw and cooked got me in the mood folks- beef sashimi it is for tonight!

Food like pasta, rice, grits etc. "doubles" in weight/size when cooked. Foods like, meats and some veggies lose size/weight. Due too losing fat/juice etc.

I'd prob throw myself into traffic if 2oz pasta for 200 cal was based off of cooked weight .

Raw.


If you are cooking for two weigh it twice. Once for cals(raw) , once for portioning for plating(cooked).

I weigh my meats after they are cooked. You can lose one to two ounces when you cook something, even more when it's beef and you cook it well done. When I am eating 7 ounces of chicken breast, I am not going to be happy if I weigh it after cooking and find it only weighs 5 ounces, but I am logging the calories of a 7 ounce chicken breast. I am very selfish about my food! I like it too much to waste any calories.

If you use an entry for raw chicken (and the package information IS normally for raw), you are underestimating what you eat if you use the weight after cooking.

If you use a cooked entry there shouldn't be much difference, but if so (and using your numbers) the calories for 7 oz raw should be identical to those for 5 oz cooked.

I have a high school ratio math test question for you.

Q.1.: If I have 1.8kg of raw roast meat

...then cook it

The roast meat is now 1.2kg of cooked roast meat.

If I measure 200g of cooked roast meat, what did it weigh raw?

What is the calculation?

A: (1800 / 1200) x 200 = 300

It's all well and good to weigh raw food, but when you're cooking roast meats, it's hard to feel like you're not just guessing / over estimating / under estimating.

I like to eat what's on my plate without feeling guilty that I've under calculated. I'm also a bit OCD when weighing so I like to be fairly close to the mark.

I hope this has helped atleast 1 person out there

hbrittingham wrote: »

I weigh my meats after they are cooked. You can lose one to two ounces when you cook something, even more when it's beef and you cook it well done. When I am eating 7 ounces of chicken breast, I am not going to be happy if I weigh it after cooking and find it only weighs 5 ounces, but I am logging the calories of a 7 ounce chicken breast. I am very selfish about my food! I like it too much to waste any calories.

The thing is, you're actually eating 7oz of chicken breast. I just found this out. UNLESS you log it as 5oz of cooked chicken breast. BUT, if you log it as a generic chicken breast, raw you calories will be under than what you're actually eating.