Is it true you should weigh your meats raw?
rikkejanell2014
Posts: 312 Member
I just weighed my chicken cooked and someone said something.
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Replies
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Im sure you will get a lot of responses, but I weigh my food before I eat it. Cooked.3
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Yes0
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Ijs Im not eating it raw so why should i weigh it raw? I want to weight what is actually going into my body.2
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Raw0
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If you're weighing for accuracy, it ought to be raw. You can cook the *kitten* out of chicken to the point of it being bone dry, all that you lose is water, so all the nutrients are still there.2
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rikkejanell2014 wrote: »Ijs Im not eating it raw so why should i weigh it raw? I want to weight what is actually going into my body.
So that you have a more accurate understanding of what the calories actually are -- if you weigh it cooked, you could underestimate the calorie content.3 -
rikkejanell2014 wrote: »Ijs Im not eating it raw so why should i weigh it raw? I want to weight what is actually going into my body.
Weighing it raw is the most accurate, along with selecting a raw entry in the database...it is still what's going into your body because all you're really losing in the cooking process is water.
4 oz of chicken raw will weigh less than that when cooked...but the calories will be more or less the same.
You can also weigh it cooked and select the cooked entry, but it's not quite as accurate.5 -
@nkkejanell2014 An example of this is my sausage and egg breakfast from Sunday. 2 slices of sausage weighed about 97 grams raw, then I cooked them in a skillet and the fat in the sausage was mostly rendered out. The sausages coming out of the skillet were much lighter than 97 g and had less fat than the raw sausage. However, I promptly put a couple of eggs in the skillet and scrambled them in the fat. The fat from the sausages came out of the skillet in the eggs, and was consumed. By logging my sausage raw, I accurately accounted for the fat. On the other hand, if you know that you intend to discard the rendered fat you can log your food using a 'cooked' database entry.5
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I weigh it raw when possible (and when I'm logging), but if I cook chicken on the bone (which I do more often than not) I use a cooked entry and it's fine. Don't worry too much about this sort of thing, just make sure you use the correct entry for how it was when you weighed it.4
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You can do either.
If you weigh it raw, use a "chicken, raw" entry from the database.
If you weight it cooked, used a "chicken, grilled" (or similar) entry from the database.
Remember that if you add other ingredients when you cook it, you need to log those too (oil, butter etc), or you can use the recipe tool if it's going in with a bunch of other things.2 -
I weigh meat cooked and use corresponding entries.1
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I weigh mine cooked. Considering a rare T-bone will have considerably more fat equalling more calories than the same T-bone that's cooked well done.2
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You have enough weight to lose for it to be fairly irrelevant subject to you using the right calorie count
But it is a better estimate to start with raw weights
As you get closer to goal you may need to tighten up5 -
Weigh raw whenever possible but weigh cooked if it's the only option you have.
PS- there are many debates about this in other threads if you use the search function.3 -
I use raw so that I'm consistent with the package's nutrition info. They're describing the calories fat etc in what they've sold me, and not necessarily the way I choose to later prepare it (boiled, roasted, fried and so on). Still, if you do a proper search, there are good entries for cooked meat, so that's why it ultimately comes down to preference. I also tend to take one chunk of meat, prepare and eat it right away. If one were preparing a lot of meat in advance and then eating a portion every so often, I could definitely see using the cooked format as being more convenient.
Link for USDA nutritional info, in case anyone doesn't have it. It's useful for crosschecking database entries, and/or finding nutrition info for foods cooked using various methods
https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/search/list5 -
I weigh my stuff after it's cooked, 1) that's what I was first told (here on MFP, haha), 2) it seems easier to me, and 3) it's just a habit now. Shrug...1
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rikkejanell2014 wrote: »Ijs Im not eating it raw so why should i weigh it raw? I want to weight what is actually going into my body.
Because when you cook it the primary thing that comes out is water making the cooked version more calorie dense. If you have a cooked entry it will be closer, but how much water comes out varies based on how something is cooked. If you weigh it raw, and by the way most of the entries in the database that don't state cooked are raw so if you use the cooked weight it will be way off, you are closer to the actual calorie number.1 -
I weigh my stuff raw, since it's usually a hassle to weigh it cooked. As you can see from the answers above, it's a personal thing. Be accurate/honest with your logging and it shouldn't make a huge difference either way.1
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I think weighing meat raw is the most accurate way.1
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I'll echo what the majority have said. Raw is undeniably more accurate. Four ounces of raw lean meat is always going to be four ounces of raw lean meat. However, four ounces of cooked meat could have started out as seven, six, five ounces, etc depending on how the meat was cooked, well-done, medium, rare, etc. And while the final weight has changed, the calorie content basically did not because what you lost during cooking was mostly water. It, obviously works a little different for high fat foods, like bacon, but it is still much more accurate.4
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It really doesn't matter. If you weigh it raw you enter it into your diary as raw. If you weigh it as cooked enter it into your diary as cooked. 100g cooked meat has more calories than 100g raw meat. Just be consistent.1
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IMO it really just doesn't matter. How long you cook will change the fat content, but your one piece of meat might not have as much fat as another in the first place anyway... so it's never going to be totally accurate anyway.
Just use an appropriate entry for what's more convenient for you and don't sweat it. I do weigh raw when possible, but it's often not, so..0 -
Personally for me the first thing I do with raw meat is cook it.. I can't handle it any longer than I have to0
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LOLKarb_Kween wrote: »Personally for me the first thing I do with raw meat is cook it.. I can't handle it any longer than I have to
This is one reason that makes me want to consider more plant food sources
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I was just about to ask this, sometimes I weigh my meat raw sometimes I weigh it after I cook it, I just found this and was wondering if other people would agree with him it seems logical
http://www.ontheregimen.com/2013/08/28/how-to-weigh-meat-cooked-or-raw/
But what about grains like Rice, Quinoa, or oat meal? Or even Pasta should they be cooked first as well?0 -
I was just about to ask this, sometimes I weigh my meat raw sometimes I weigh it after I cook it, I just found this and was wondering if other people would agree with him it seems logical
http://www.ontheregimen.com/2013/08/28/how-to-weigh-meat-cooked-or-raw/
But what about grains like Rice, Quinoa, or oat meal? Or even Pasta should they be cooked first as well?
I weigh everything raw/dry - how you cook the grains will change the final weight. we can boil rice and have it double in weight from raw weight if we cook it for too long, or only go up 1.5 times (For example) if we cook it for a little less time. same for quinoa and pasta.3 -
I weigh mine cooked, and I'm doing fine.1
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I weigh mine cooked because I cook mass amounts of food at a time, not one piece at a time. It is easier to weigh one cooked piece at a time before serving, then find the appropriate entry. So far so good. If it were just me, then I'd weigh it raw as I cooked it.
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newheavensearth wrote: »I weigh mine cooked because I cook mass amounts of food at a time, not one piece at a time. It is easier to weigh one cooked piece at a time before serving, then find the appropriate entry. So far so good. If it were just me, then I'd weigh it raw as I cooked it.
we cook in bulk but weigh raw - it's either cooked separated in portions, or we reweigh after cooking then divide that amount by however many portions we cooked0
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