Calculating quinoa calories

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 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.

morganpalmer9 wrote: »

Queenmunchy 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.

kwtilbury wrote: »

Queenmunchy 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.

@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!

morganpalmer9 wrote: »

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.

Zero. Because I won't eat it. Blech.

morganpalmer9 wrote: »

Queenmunchy 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.

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...

morganpalmer9 wrote: »

Queenmunchy 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.

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.

Use the dry amount to calculate your calories. That's really all you need to know.

If you cooked 100 grams of dry quinoa and you eat a quarter of it after you cook it, log 25 grams of dry quinoa.

How much it grows is irrelevant. <--- Keep it classy people.