Commonly confused serving sizes (pasta, others?)
Replies
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The things I find tricky to weigh are:
- Tofu -- when you buy it, it's packaged with water. With the water still in it, the total weight for the package is much higher than what's on the label. Do I weigh it after I squeeze the water out? Doesn't everyone squeeze out a different amount of water?
- Apples -- I know I should weigh it, then go back after eating it and subtract the core, to get a true measure in grams. But usually I can't be bothered. So I just use an estimate for "1 medium" or "1 large" apple and leave it at that.
- Chicken on the bone -- it's a royal pain to subtract the uneaten bone afterwards, not knowing how much I actual ate until I do. It could throw my calories off by quite a bit.
- Chicken soup -- calories in cooked soup are NOT the same as the calories in the sum of their raw ingredients. Especially in something like a clear chicken soup broth, because the chicken and vegetables are strained out before eating, and the fat is skimmed multiple times during cooking. There doesn't seem to be any good way to even guesstimate at the calories.
I should mention that I'm not OCD enough to let any of these things really bother me all that much; I take an estimate and move on. But in the spirit of the thread, they're the ones I can think of.
You just made me really glad I can't handle eating tofu any more. I just wasted an inordinate amount of time trying to think about weighing it.
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TheVirgoddess wrote: »I spent about four months eating really sad amounts of pasta until I learned how to measure it properly.
I get confused about canned tuna. It has a weight, but then it has a "drained" weight. Mine never matches the drained weight. It's just water though, so do I log the drained weight or the weight I get.
It may not match because you don't drain it enough or drain it too much. I've weighed the total weight with the liquid before and it's pretty much right on point to the label. So I don't weigh canned tuna.I'm confused with serving sizes of frozen vs cooked meat. In most cases, it weighs more frozen. So do I track the frozen weight or the cooked weight? So far I have been tracking the cooked weight, but I could be wrong all this time.
Preferably, you're supposed to weigh it uncooked and unfrozen, just room temp or refrigerator temp raw. You can use settings for cooked, but, like the bacon, it's a crapshoot if your level of cooking is remotely close to that used for setting the info for cooked meat. Roasting something 5 minutes longer could add another 5% to calories by weight, because you've lost that much more moisture. Roasting it 5 minutes less could mean you're overlogging by 5% because you have more moisture offsetting the weight and increasing the distribution of calories.
I weigh both cooked and raw and use the correct entry. Hasn't stopped my weight loss progress. I've been weighing primarily raw lately because it's more convenient ofr the individual meals I make, but I've not been losing any faster than when I weigh primarily cooked.0 -
The things I find tricky to weigh are:
- Tofu -- when you buy it, it's packaged with water. With the water still in it, the total weight for the package is much higher than what's on the label. Do I weigh it after I squeeze the water out? Doesn't everyone squeeze out a different amount of water?
- Apples -- I know I should weigh it, then go back after eating it and subtract the core, to get a true measure in grams. But usually I can't be bothered. So I just use an estimate for "1 medium" or "1 large" apple and leave it at that.
- Chicken on the bone -- it's a royal pain to subtract the uneaten bone afterwards, not knowing how much I actual ate until I do. It could throw my calories off by quite a bit.
- Chicken soup -- calories in cooked soup are NOT the same as the calories in the sum of their raw ingredients. Especially in something like a clear chicken soup broth, because the chicken and vegetables are strained out before eating, and the fat is skimmed multiple times during cooking. There doesn't seem to be any good way to even guesstimate at the calories.
I should mention that I'm not OCD enough to let any of these things really bother me all that much; I take an estimate and move on. But in the spirit of the thread, they're the ones I can think of.
RE: chicken on the bone, honestly, I quit bothering to buy anything but boneless a long time ago for that reason. If for some reason I'm stuck (like when I buy a bunch at Costco and don't read the label closely enough), I'd rather debone it and weigh before I cook than deal with the magic math of cooking method + weigh the bones after I eat.
And you just made me glad I'm a vegetarian, because my favorite way with chicken used to be to roast a whole bird. I just wasted an incredible amount of time wondering how you'd go about logging what you ate off of that.
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If I'm the only person eating a whole container of something in my house (like tofu), I will just eye ball portions and log it as a ratio of what's in the whole container. I eat the entire package within a few days so any thing I misjudged should even out at the end. Makes life a lot easier for things like tofu and canned beams and the 4 servings per container of yogurt I bring to work where there is no scale. Tuna, I eat the whole can and trust the label.
This might not work trying to get super lean who is aiming for as close to 100 percent accuracy as possible but I aim for a decent deficit per week and eat out at least once a twice where I am making a guess at the cals anyway, so if there is a 50 cal miscalculation it doesn't really bother me. I think a more relaxed approach can work for people who are good at not lying to themselves and who use common sense. Ex, if you are not losing weight and you don't want to be bothered with weighing your cereal then start measuring .5 a cup to eat instead of 1 cup and see if that makes a difference.0 -
mamapeach910 wrote: »The things I find tricky to weigh are:
- Tofu -- when you buy it, it's packaged with water. With the water still in it, the total weight for the package is much higher than what's on the label. Do I weigh it after I squeeze the water out? Doesn't everyone squeeze out a different amount of water?
- Apples -- I know I should weigh it, then go back after eating it and subtract the core, to get a true measure in grams. But usually I can't be bothered. So I just use an estimate for "1 medium" or "1 large" apple and leave it at that.
- Chicken on the bone -- it's a royal pain to subtract the uneaten bone afterwards, not knowing how much I actual ate until I do. It could throw my calories off by quite a bit.
- Chicken soup -- calories in cooked soup are NOT the same as the calories in the sum of their raw ingredients. Especially in something like a clear chicken soup broth, because the chicken and vegetables are strained out before eating, and the fat is skimmed multiple times during cooking. There doesn't seem to be any good way to even guesstimate at the calories.
I should mention that I'm not OCD enough to let any of these things really bother me all that much; I take an estimate and move on. But in the spirit of the thread, they're the ones I can think of.
RE: chicken on the bone, honestly, I quit bothering to buy anything but boneless a long time ago for that reason. If for some reason I'm stuck (like when I buy a bunch at Costco and don't read the label closely enough), I'd rather debone it and weigh before I cook than deal with the magic math of cooking method + weigh the bones after I eat.
And you just made me glad I'm a vegetarian, because my favorite way with chicken used to be to roast a whole bird. I just wasted an incredible amount of time wondering how you'd go about logging what you ate off of that.
I do this a lot, as it's my favorite too. I just don't usually worry about neatness and pull the meat off the bone (and weigh) when I plate it. The cooked entries aren't ideal, but are good enough.0 -
If I'm the only person eating a whole container of something in my house (like tofu), I will just eye ball portions and log it as a ratio of what's in the whole container. I eat the entire package within a few days so any thing I misjudged should even out at the end. Makes life a lot easier for things like tofu and canned beams and the 4 servings per container of yogurt I bring to work where there is no scale. Tuna, I eat the whole can and trust the label.
This isn't an issue for me with packaged things--it's easier just to weigh most of those I eat, like yogurt and cottage cheese and oatmeal. But it's totally what I do for most multi-ingredient recipes that I eat over multiple days and am not sharing with anyone (especially premade lunches). I figure the calories in the whole and split them evenly over the days I plan to eat it (even prelogging, sometimes). I figure if I eat 450 on Monday and 510 on Tuesday but log 480 for both days it will not matter. Besides, I might have more meat on one day and more veggies on another, apart from slight differences in weight. It evens out.
I often eyeball this kind of thing when splitting (or one-third, two-thirds) with someone else, too, since you can tell pretty well by comparing portions.0 -
Quinoa!! No where on the packaging states if the kcals are for 100gram of dry or cooked. I'd love to know! 100gr of cooked quinoa is nothing!0
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Oh and I'll add that Costco rotisserie chicken us the one thing that does drive me nuts bc I like to eat it frequently and I have not been able to find something good to use for it after extensive googling. There is a post with what is supposedly an email from costco re nutritional info on the bodybuilding.com forums but no idea if it is for cooked or with or without bones. Info for rotisserie chicken in general is a mess.0
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spoonyspork wrote: »azulvioleta6 wrote: »A dry two ounces of pasta does not cook up to be a plateful of pasta.
Maybe a Fiestaware salad plate, if it is a bigger pasta and you really overcook it. Maybe.
2oz (dry weight) pasta on a 9" plate (it's the spaghetti noodles on the right):
So yeah... doesn't fill up EVERY INCH of the plate... but that's seriously more than I usually ate per serving before I was measuring anything. Add some sauce/veggies/etc and it quickly becomes a HUGE meal...
(that's the '150 calorie' ronzoni spaghetti btw, which doesn't expand as much as the regular stuff)
I must be measuring wrong, cos when i weigh mine it comes out at about half of this amount!!
I donno, but this is always the amount I come up with! Just to be sure my scale wasn't way off (because it just seems like such a large amount!), I also cooked an entire box (containing 6 servings) and divided it up into 6 equal servings after cooking/draining, rather than weighing anything dry at the beginning.0 -
The problem with spaghetti and "two ounces dry weight" is that I cook for two or three people at a time. So once I put in 6 ounces of dry pasta, I have no idea if I'm accurately serving myself a third of it.0
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(I guess I could weigh all of it, and remove some until I've removed 1/3rd. But by then I want to EAT, not screw around with scales.)0
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Tinabob777 wrote: »I hate the serving sizes of popcorn. It confuses that daylights out of me.
RIGHT?! I was accidentally eating 400 extra calories of popcorn almost daily, because I didn't realize that the label was having you do all this math. It totally convoluted serving size vs popped vs kernals ack! They tricked me but now I just buy the 100 cal packs to make it easy.0 -
I guess I look at the whole measuring thing differently than other people. I measured diligently at first, but mostly with an end goal to be able to judge portion sizes on my own one day. After all, I'm not going to go through life carrying a food scale around with me everywhere I go.
To that end, I find volume measurements far more useful than weight. I can eyeball a half a cup of something or 1/8 of a pie or whatever but I'm absolutely hopeless at estimating weight. I might be off by 20% with volume but I'm easily off by 200% or more with weight. Since I'm in maintenance, I just internally adjust my estimates if I've gained too much but most days I strive to stay around 50-100 calories "in the green" to account for inaccuracies and that seems to work.
I still do measure on occasion to keep my guesses calibrated but for the most part I don't bother. That's one reason I don't get upset if a 3/4 cup of cereal weighs in at 32g vs. 28g. 4g is just too small of a number to get upset about. I'm not even sure the scale is that accurate or if the calorie estimates for 28g used by the manufacturer are that accurate.0 -
I've weighed my kernels before and after popping and they weighed the same when I included any of the duds that didn't actually popholly55555 wrote: »Tinabob777 wrote: »I hate the serving sizes of popcorn. It confuses that daylights out of me.
RIGHT?! I was accidentally eating 400 extra calories of popcorn almost daily, because I didn't realize that the label was having you do all this math. It totally convoluted serving size vs popped vs kernals ack! They tricked me but now I just buy the 100 cal packs to make it easy.
So unless there is a difference between air-popped and bagged/oil-popped?
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Yeah, unless you're cooking the kernals in oil and/or adding butter and seasonings, then there should be no meaningful difference in weight between popped and unpopped.
I've weighed my kernels before and after popping and they weighed the same when I included any of the duds that didn't actually popholly55555 wrote: »Tinabob777 wrote: »I hate the serving sizes of popcorn. It confuses that daylights out of me.
RIGHT?! I was accidentally eating 400 extra calories of popcorn almost daily, because I didn't realize that the label was having you do all this math. It totally convoluted serving size vs popped vs kernals ack! They tricked me but now I just buy the 100 cal packs to make it easy. So unless there is a difference between air-popped and bagged/oil-popped?
I add 60g unpopped to an airpopper and if every kernal pops I'll get 60g of popped corn.
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Lourdesong wrote: »
Yeah, unless you're cooking the kernals in oil and/or adding butter and seasonings, then there should be no meaningful difference in weight between popped and unpopped.
I've weighed my kernels before and after popping and they weighed the same when I included any of the duds that didn't actually popholly55555 wrote: »Tinabob777 wrote: »I hate the serving sizes of popcorn. It confuses that daylights out of me.
RIGHT?! I was accidentally eating 400 extra calories of popcorn almost daily, because I didn't realize that the label was having you do all this math. It totally convoluted serving size vs popped vs kernals ack! They tricked me but now I just buy the 100 cal packs to make it easy. So unless there is a difference between air-popped and bagged/oil-popped?
I add 60g unpopped to an airpopper and if every kernal pops I'll get 60g of popped corn.
This is why I generally weigh it after popping, otherwise I lose like 10-15g of popcorn because it doesn't all pop and some end up gonners on the floor and not worth eating lol.0 -
spoonyspork wrote: »azulvioleta6 wrote: »A dry two ounces of pasta does not cook up to be a plateful of pasta.
Maybe a Fiestaware salad plate, if it is a bigger pasta and you really overcook it. Maybe.
2oz (dry weight) pasta on a 9" plate (it's the spaghetti noodles on the right):
So yeah... doesn't fill up EVERY INCH of the plate... but that's seriously more than I usually ate per serving before I was measuring anything. Add some sauce/veggies/etc and it quickly becomes a HUGE meal...
(that's the '150 calorie' ronzoni spaghetti btw, which doesn't expand as much as the regular stuff)
I must be measuring wrong, cos when i weigh mine it comes out at about half of this amount!!
Same here. That would be 3oz of the pasta I use (healthy harvest Ronzoni).0 -
spoonyspork wrote: »azulvioleta6 wrote: »A dry two ounces of pasta does not cook up to be a plateful of pasta.
Maybe a Fiestaware salad plate, if it is a bigger pasta and you really overcook it. Maybe.
2oz (dry weight) pasta on a 9" plate (it's the spaghetti noodles on the right):
So yeah... doesn't fill up EVERY INCH of the plate... but that's seriously more than I usually ate per serving before I was measuring anything. Add some sauce/veggies/etc and it quickly becomes a HUGE meal...
(that's the '150 calorie' ronzoni spaghetti btw, which doesn't expand as much as the regular stuff)
I must be measuring wrong, cos when i weigh mine it comes out at about half of this amount!!
Same here. That would be 3oz of the pasta I use (healthy harvest Ronzoni).
Same with me. I always make it al dente, perhaps that's why? If it's more cooked it will expand more?0 -
Lourdesong wrote: »
Yeah, unless you're cooking the kernals in oil and/or adding butter and seasonings, then there should be no meaningful difference in weight between popped and unpopped.
I've weighed my kernels before and after popping and they weighed the same when I included any of the duds that didn't actually popholly55555 wrote: »Tinabob777 wrote: »I hate the serving sizes of popcorn. It confuses that daylights out of me.
RIGHT?! I was accidentally eating 400 extra calories of popcorn almost daily, because I didn't realize that the label was having you do all this math. It totally convoluted serving size vs popped vs kernals ack! They tricked me but now I just buy the 100 cal packs to make it easy. So unless there is a difference between air-popped and bagged/oil-popped?
I add 60g unpopped to an airpopper and if every kernal pops I'll get 60g of popped corn.
This is why I generally weigh it after popping, otherwise I lose like 10-15g of popcorn because it doesn't all pop and some end up gonners on the floor and not worth eating lol.
Generally I do too. Also cuz the majority of the time when I make it it's because hubs also wants popcorn. So I remove 30 or so grams of popped popcorn afterwards for me and then season my portion how I want. Whereas he likes butter and all the fixins on his portion which is whatever is left minus the duds and the airborne popcorn that flew across the kitchen, lol.
Honestly, if anyone eats popcorn often and is watching calories, just get an airpopper. They're so cheap (I don't think I even paid $20 for mine) and logging popcorn is such a breeze.
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spoonyspork wrote: »azulvioleta6 wrote: »A dry two ounces of pasta does not cook up to be a plateful of pasta.
Maybe a Fiestaware salad plate, if it is a bigger pasta and you really overcook it. Maybe.
2oz (dry weight) pasta on a 9" plate (it's the spaghetti noodles on the right):
So yeah... doesn't fill up EVERY INCH of the plate... but that's seriously more than I usually ate per serving before I was measuring anything. Add some sauce/veggies/etc and it quickly becomes a HUGE meal...
(that's the '150 calorie' ronzoni spaghetti btw, which doesn't expand as much as the regular stuff)
Your scale must be much more generous than mine is, or you are seriously overcooking your noodles...I am not getting nearly that much.0
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