About weighing food

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mbenatoff
mbenatoff Posts: 4 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I feel this is crucial for all avid loggers...

Do you weigh food before or after its cooked/grilled/boiled etc...?

Thanks

Replies

  • sheepotato
    sheepotato Posts: 600 Member
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    Pre-cooked weight, if you use a marinade you may want to weigh it again afterward to see how much marinard was absorbed.
  • Sued0nim
    Sued0nim Posts: 17,456 Member
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    generally after - but then I look for the cooked entries

    sometimes I would do it before and follow the pack guidelines

    for one-pot recipes I build them by raw ingredients and enter them in the builder, then I weigh the entire cooked dish and rather than use a serving portion (eg 4 servings) I put in the number of 100 gramme portions it makes (eg 16) so I can take more or less dependent on hunger
  • dunnodunno
    dunnodunno Posts: 2,290 Member
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    mbenatoff wrote: »
    I feel this is crucial for all avid loggers...

    Do you weigh food before or after its cooked/grilled/boiled etc...?

    Thanks

    I weigh most things raw/uncooked (steaks, fish, chicken breast. rice, etc.) unless it's something like a whole chicken then I just weigh out the portion I eat.

  • Phrick
    Phrick Posts: 2,765 Member
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    uncooked or raw weights for almost everything
  • michellemybelll
    michellemybelll Posts: 2,228 Member
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    i buy my chicken pre-cooked at the store, so i weigh mine out cooked.
  • kuranda10
    kuranda10 Posts: 593 Member
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    I weigh it after it's cooked. That way the water and fat is cooked out of it.
    Unless the nutritional data on the back is clearly measured in raw form. then I'll use that.
  • Snow3y
    Snow3y Posts: 1,412 Member
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    Pastas, rices, etc before.. Meats and such, after.
  • Liftng4Lis
    Liftng4Lis Posts: 15,150 Member
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    I weigh raw.
  • TimothyFish
    TimothyFish Posts: 4,925 Member
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    Calorie counts are generally based on the component parts of foods and those are determined without cooking. Even if the package listed calories after preparation, it is likely that they were determined prior to cooking and then adjusted by the weight of the final product. This does not take into account that cooking food can cause chemical reactions that increase the effective energy content of the food.
  • lmr0528
    lmr0528 Posts: 427 Member
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    I weigh my meat after it's cooked. Everything else usually gets weighed raw.
  • CooCooPuff
    CooCooPuff Posts: 4,374 Member
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    I only weigh cooked if it's something like a whole fish with bones or a lobster in its shell.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,876 Member
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    generally I weigh raw...but I make a lot of roasts and what not too so in that case, my best bet is to weigh cooked...if I was logging I would just look for something like, "top round grilled - USDA"...something like that.
  • esjones12
    esjones12 Posts: 1,363 Member
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    I always do after it's cooked and haven't had an issue.....most packages list their cooked info....*shrug*
  • 970Mikaela1
    970Mikaela1 Posts: 2,013 Member
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    I weigh my chicken cooked . beef raw. Fish raw. I just CANT touch raw chicken any longer than I have to.....

  • KimWillBeThin81
    KimWillBeThin81 Posts: 64
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    I weigh all my meats raw because I portion it out to freeze in separate baggies, foil or saran wrap. That way when I pull a portion out of the freezer I already know how many grams it is. I weigh everything else raw too, like frozen or fresh veggies, rice, pasta and other grains. The only time I weigh cooked food is when its a roast with roasted veggies.
  • blossomingbutterfly
    blossomingbutterfly Posts: 743 Member
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    I always weigh before cooking. Then I separate portions out for freezing and other meals.
  • ana3067
    ana3067 Posts: 5,624 Member
    edited December 2014
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    I weigh it any way that I please and that's convenient, and then use the appropriate nutritional information. I baked chicken for lunch today, and I decided to make soup for dinner. So I used the cooked weight and cooked nutritional info for my soup recipe instead of the raw (since I normally just throw in raw chunks to cook in the stock).

    I'm anaI about weighing what I eat and using the correct information, but I'm not anaI about what state the food is in when i weigh it.

    Also come on, MFP. grow up - the word "anaI" is not inappropriate unless you are 8 years old. (had to get creative, mfp is starring out the word)
  • mbenatoff
    mbenatoff Posts: 4 Member
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    Thanks for all your help!!
  • ksy1969
    ksy1969 Posts: 700 Member
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    For the most part I weight the meats raw. There are to many variables when cooking that can effect the final weight of the cooked product. Sometimes I will weigh fish or chicken cooked but that is because we would be cooking a bunch up and I don't know which will be mine till it is time to serve.

    As others have said if cooking something in a pot like soup, spaghetti sauce, etc... I will measure out raw ingredients before they go into pot, add them up and weight out pot when completed. I then divide total calories by ounce or per 100gm.
  • brightsideofpink
    brightsideofpink Posts: 1,018 Member
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    I weigh cooked and look for appropriate entry. If I can't find one (and that's rare), I don't sweat it. Most of my meats are very lean and I don't think there's a large enough calorie difference to make it worth it to me to have the extra dishes for the raw foods to go near my scale. I'm not a germaphobe, but the less things I have touching raw meat, the happier I am.

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