Calculating quinoa calories

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Don't make fun, but I cannot seem to figure this out. Blame it on my terrible math skills.

So a couple days a week I eat 4oz of quinoa. The bag has info for it dry, and whenever I cook it, it seems to grow around 2.6 times larger.

How the hell do I figure out the calories/other nutritional info for this cooked?

The package says for a 1/4 cup dry serving:
160 calories
2.5g of fat
30g carbs
3g fiber
3g sugar
6g protein

So if I am eating 4 COOKEd oz of this, what are the stats? someone help! :)
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Replies

  • HealthierRayne
    HealthierRayne Posts: 268 Member
    edited May 2016
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    I totally agree - it gets confusing. What I do instead is look for entries that specify calories for the cooked product or I will just cook 1/4 cup (or whatever dry serving I decide) and eat all of it.

    If the cooked version of the food is not available and it's a whole food like quinoa (whole foods are pretty much always listed), you might want to make your own food entry and use the data found here Nutrition Data
  • Queenmunchy
    Queenmunchy Posts: 3,380 Member
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    Weigh the dry measurement before you cook it. If you're making multiple servings, put the raw weight/ingredients into the recipe builder, weigh the entire cooked batch (minus the weight of the dish), and set your portions for the total gram weight. When you dish out your bowl, you can log that number of grams and it should be accurate.
  • kwtilbury
    kwtilbury Posts: 1,234 Member
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    Weigh the dry measurement before you cook it. If you're making multiple servings, put the raw weight/ingredients into the recipe builder, weigh the entire cooked batch (minus the weight of the dish), and set your portions for the total gram weight. When you dish out your bowl, you can log that number of grams and it should be accurate.

    This. There is also nutrition data for cooked quinoa, but it's not as accurate as the amount of water content can vary.
  • NEOHgirl
    NEOHgirl Posts: 237 Member
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    Yes, measure it before you cook it, and that is what you should use.
  • morganpalmer9
    morganpalmer9 Posts: 73 Member
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    Weigh the dry measurement before you cook it. If you're making multiple servings, put the raw weight/ingredients into the recipe builder, weigh the entire cooked batch (minus the weight of the dish), and set your portions for the total gram weight. When you dish out your bowl, you can log that number of grams and it should be accurate.

    Sorry but this doesn't make sense to me. I always make multiple servings.
    kwtilbury wrote: »
    Weigh the dry measurement before you cook it. If you're making multiple servings, put the raw weight/ingredients into the recipe builder, weigh the entire cooked batch (minus the weight of the dish), and set your portions for the total gram weight. When you dish out your bowl, you can log that number of grams and it should be accurate.

    This. There is also nutrition data for cooked quinoa, but it's not as accurate as the amount of water content can vary.

    Yeah I don't get this to be honest. The issue is I don't know the calories for the total weight since it grows in size. I've used other nutritional data for cooked quinoa, but its never the brand I use and I would like to be as accurate as possible.
  • morganpalmer9
    morganpalmer9 Posts: 73 Member
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    NEOHgirl wrote: »
    Yes, measure it before you cook it, and that is what you should use.

    I make multiple servings. I don't really want to make one serving just to weigh it, I'm sure there must be some way I can calculate it no matter how much I cook at one time.
  • janejellyroll
    janejellyroll Posts: 25,763 Member
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    Weigh the dry measurement before you cook it. If you're making multiple servings, put the raw weight/ingredients into the recipe builder, weigh the entire cooked batch (minus the weight of the dish), and set your portions for the total gram weight. When you dish out your bowl, you can log that number of grams and it should be accurate.

    Sorry but this doesn't make sense to me. I always make multiple servings.
    kwtilbury wrote: »
    Weigh the dry measurement before you cook it. If you're making multiple servings, put the raw weight/ingredients into the recipe builder, weigh the entire cooked batch (minus the weight of the dish), and set your portions for the total gram weight. When you dish out your bowl, you can log that number of grams and it should be accurate.

    This. There is also nutrition data for cooked quinoa, but it's not as accurate as the amount of water content can vary.

    Yeah I don't get this to be honest. The issue is I don't know the calories for the total weight since it grows in size. I've used other nutritional data for cooked quinoa, but its never the brand I use and I would like to be as accurate as possible.

    Weigh your quinoa before cooking and note that weight. Let's say you make four servings from what you decide to cook. When done cooking, weigh the cooked amount and portion out 1/4 of that for yourself. The actual weight of your portion doesn't need to be logged, you just need to know that you're getting 1/4 of the total cooked quinoa. What you log will be 1/4 of the dry weight that you noted before cooking.
  • Queenmunchy
    Queenmunchy Posts: 3,380 Member
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    Weigh the dry measurement before you cook it. If you're making multiple servings, put the raw weight/ingredients into the recipe builder, weigh the entire cooked batch (minus the weight of the dish), and set your portions for the total gram weight. When you dish out your bowl, you can log that number of grams and it should be accurate.

    Sorry but this doesn't make sense to me. I always make multiple servings.
    kwtilbury wrote: »
    Weigh the dry measurement before you cook it. If you're making multiple servings, put the raw weight/ingredients into the recipe builder, weigh the entire cooked batch (minus the weight of the dish), and set your portions for the total gram weight. When you dish out your bowl, you can log that number of grams and it should be accurate.

    This. There is also nutrition data for cooked quinoa, but it's not as accurate as the amount of water content can vary.

    Yeah I don't get this to be honest. The issue is I don't know the calories for the total weight since it grows in size. I've used other nutritional data for cooked quinoa, but its never the brand I use and I would like to be as accurate as possible.

    That is instructions on how to be accurate for multiple servings.
  • morganpalmer9
    morganpalmer9 Posts: 73 Member
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    Weigh the dry measurement before you cook it. If you're making multiple servings, put the raw weight/ingredients into the recipe builder, weigh the entire cooked batch (minus the weight of the dish), and set your portions for the total gram weight. When you dish out your bowl, you can log that number of grams and it should be accurate.

    Feeling pretty dumb but I just don't get this. I always measure before I cook, as I have to follow the recipe. I use a half cup dry most weeks. This usually increases 2.5ishx in size. For example, I made a half cup dry this morning. Total weight was around 10.6 oz. If I understand what you are saying, I would be putting in that I eat over 320 calories for 4 oz of quiona which I cannot imagine is right. I totally know that I am calculating this wrong but I just really don't get it.
  • acheben
    acheben Posts: 476 Member
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    Weigh the dry measurement before you cook it. If you're making multiple servings, put the raw weight/ingredients into the recipe builder, weigh the entire cooked batch (minus the weight of the dish), and set your portions for the total gram weight. When you dish out your bowl, you can log that number of grams and it should be accurate.

    Sorry but this doesn't make sense to me. I always make multiple servings.
    For your current situation, I would just used a cooked quinoa entry in the database.

    The next time you make your multiple servings of quinoa, weigh the dry quinoa before you cook it and weigh the cooked quinoa after. @Queenmunchy explained how to use the recipe builder to help with that.
  • morganpalmer9
    morganpalmer9 Posts: 73 Member
    edited May 2016
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    a
  • morganpalmer9
    morganpalmer9 Posts: 73 Member
    edited May 2016
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    acheben wrote: »
    Weigh the dry measurement before you cook it. If you're making multiple servings, put the raw weight/ingredients into the recipe builder, weigh the entire cooked batch (minus the weight of the dish), and set your portions for the total gram weight. When you dish out your bowl, you can log that number of grams and it should be accurate.

    Sorry but this doesn't make sense to me. I always make multiple servings.
    For your current situation, I would just used a cooked quinoa entry in the database.

    The next time you make your multiple servings of quinoa, weigh the dry quinoa before you cook it and weigh the cooked quinoa after. @Queenmunchy explained how to use the recipe builder to help with that.

    I don't see how you can do this with the recipe builder option? It just allows me to put in dry quinoa calories? And I don't know the total calories of the cooked quinoa. So I have no idea how I would use that option
  • Queenmunchy
    Queenmunchy Posts: 3,380 Member
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    @morganpalmer9 - okay so 1/2 cup is 84g. Put 84 grams of dry quinoa into the recipe builder. When you're all done cooking, take the cooked quinoa and weigh it, then subtract the weight of the dish (you probably want to weigh your empty pot before cooking). If it comes out to 2000g total, you would set it as 2000 servings. That way when you dish out 250g, you can put 250 servings.

    Another option is to do the same as the above, but actually divvy your portions into equal containers and set that as your serving size. Most people don't like to do this with several portions for storage purposes, but it works well if you have the room!

  • erickirb
    erickirb Posts: 12,293 Member
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    Lets say a serving is 50 grams, you weigh total amount first and it weighs 200 grams, then when you cook it, when done it weighs 500 grams. If you know that 50 grams has 160 cals then 200 raw = 640 (160*4) just like 200 is 50*4. This means the cooked 500 grams now has 640 cals. If you eat 100 cooked grams then you would eat 128 cal (640/5) since 100 is 1/5 of the 500.

    Whoever said you would never use algebra after school was wrong, comes in very handy.
  • vanessapreston66
    vanessapreston66 Posts: 16 Member
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    Don't make fun, but I cannot seem to figure this out. Blame it on my terrible math skills.

    So a couple days a week I eat 4oz of quinoa. The bag has info for it dry, and whenever I cook it, it seems to grow around 2.6 times larger.

    How the hell do I figure out the calories/other nutritional info for this cooked?

    The package says for a 1/4 cup dry serving:
    160 calories
    2.5g of fat
    30g carbs
    3g fiber
    3g sugar
    6g protein

    So if I am eating 4 COOKEd oz of this, what are the stats? someone help! :)

    Using the nutritional info given here, if you cooked 1/4 cup it would consist of 160 calories after cooking with water only. Weigh it cooked. If for example it now weighs 12oz, then if you had 4oz of that the calories would be 1/3 of 160 calories given on the packet. ie 53 calories.

    (Half a cup dry = 320 cals dry and whatever you weigh it at cooked, divide that figure by 4oz for multiple servings)

    Remember as another member says, to weigh the container the cooked food goes in first so you are only weighing the food itself.

  • acheben
    acheben Posts: 476 Member
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    Here's an example of how I use the recipe builder for cooked wild rice. I add 142g of dry wild rice and 3/4 cup of chicken stock to a pot. The cooked rice weighed 250g so I entered this as the serving size.
    yy23mox2k6xa.png
  • quiksylver296
    quiksylver296 Posts: 28,442 Member
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    Zero. Because I won't eat it. Blech. :D
  • no_day_but_2day
    no_day_but_2day Posts: 222 Member
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    a

    OK. What you do is going into recipe builder-->Build it manually-->Enter the ingredient (In this case, your brand of quinoa). Weight out however much you want to make. If you are making 4oz of DRY quinoa then put 4oz of dry quinoa into the recipe. Then, put how many servings it is (i.e. 4 servings). Then, when you make your batch, enter it into your diary as 1 serving. 8pektwkm0jay.jpg
    Doc1.jpg 111.1K
  • SezxyStef
    SezxyStef Posts: 15,268 Member
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    Weigh the dry measurement before you cook it. If you're making multiple servings, put the raw weight/ingredients into the recipe builder, weigh the entire cooked batch (minus the weight of the dish), and set your portions for the total gram weight. When you dish out your bowl, you can log that number of grams and it should be accurate.

    Feeling pretty dumb but I just don't get this. I always measure before I cook, as I have to follow the recipe. I use a half cup dry most weeks. This usually increases 2.5ishx in size. For example, I made a half cup dry this morning. Total weight was around 10.6 oz. If I understand what you are saying, I would be putting in that I eat over 320 calories for 4 oz of quiona which I cannot imagine is right. I totally know that I am calculating this wrong but I just really don't get it.

    So if 1/4c has 160 calories and you are cooking 1/2c yes that is 320 calories...

    But if it cooks up to 10.5 oz (for rounding) and you are eating 4oz that is 0.38 of the total cooked

    So for 4oz of cooked Quino you are consuming calories.

    320*0.38=121.9

    math...

  • SezxyStef
    SezxyStef Posts: 15,268 Member
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    crazyravr wrote: »
    Quinoa dry 0.5c = 320kcal

    After cooking it if you eat the whole thing you ate 320cal, if you eat half 160cal. How is this difficult to understand?
    Or is it that you dont believe so little of grains can have that many calories?[/quote]

    That would be my guess....