Calculating calories for marinades

VanessaB1225
VanessaB1225 Posts: 8 Member
edited November 17 in Health and Weight Loss
Hi all,

How do you account for the caloric value of a marinade when much of it gets tossed when the meat is pulled out for cooking?

Thanks!!!!

Replies

  • mudonthetires856
    mudonthetires856 Posts: 79 Member
    I totally estimate it. For a marinade with olive oil, I log a tablespoon. For lower calorie items like lime juice, I just log the entire lime. While it's not accurate, it still makes me conscious of the calories I'm adding.
  • vespiquenn
    vespiquenn Posts: 1,455 Member
    If you have a food scale, weighing the marinade before and after.
  • KettleTO
    KettleTO Posts: 144 Member
    I think you have to assume that all fats are absorbed. For example, if you use oil (1 T), soy (6 T) and lime juice (3 T), weigh marinade. Remove protein. Weigh marinade. If 2/3 of liquid is less I would enter 1T oil, 2 T soy and 1 T lime juice.

    I assume all fats are absorbed with tofu and tempeh and there is more fat in meat, chicken or fish.
  • cerise_noir
    cerise_noir Posts: 5,468 Member
    vespiquenn wrote: »
    If you have a food scale, weighing the marinade before and after.

    This. Weigh marinade before adding what you're marinating. When entering the marinade recipe in the recipe builder, use the amount of grams (eg, 275g) as the number of servings. After you've taken the marinated food out, weigh marinade again and log the difference.
  • earlnabby
    earlnabby Posts: 8,171 Member
    vespiquenn wrote: »
    If you have a food scale, weighing the marinade before and after.

    This is the same idea as to what I do but I weigh the meat before and after instead. If it is a bloodier cut of meat (roast, steak) I will adjust upwards assuming a bit more of the marinade remained on the meat and a bit more of the blood went into the marinade to be tossed.
  • RobD520
    RobD520 Posts: 420 Member
    About 10 times, I have had to lose somewhere between 8-20 pounds in late winter-early spring to compete in some kind of running, walking or cycling long distance activities.

    For proteins, when I don't make the marinades into a sauce, I don't count it. I have always lost according to expectations and hit the starting line at goal using a CICO strategy.

    Meat doesn't absorb nearly as much oil as bread or potato. Most of the marinade is left in the pan; and my share of the oil in the marinade is probably LESS THAN 1/2 a teaspoon. So if I'm not counting the 16-20 calories, living on the edge has not hurt me.

    Maybe I'm over-counting other food or under-counting exercise........




  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    I never bothered...it's not like a ton of marinade is going to be consumed unless it will be further used as a sauce...in my book it's negligible and nothing I've ever concerned myself with.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    KettleTO wrote: »
    I think you have to assume that all fats are absorbed. For example, if you use oil (1 T), soy (6 T) and lime juice (3 T), weigh marinade. Remove protein. Weigh marinade. If 2/3 of liquid is less I would enter 1T oil, 2 T soy and 1 T lime juice.

    I assume all fats are absorbed with tofu and tempeh and there is more fat in meat, chicken or fish.

    There's no way all fats are absorbed into the meat...very little if any fat will actually be absorbed into the meat...a little tiny bit will stick to the outside of the meat.
  • Theo166
    Theo166 Posts: 2,564 Member
    If your calorie counting is on track and you are losing as expected, why get pedantic about the little things?

    Take my breakfast today, a squirt of sriracha sauce on my eggs is only a couple calories so why bother. My eggs are probably off from the std estimate by more than that.
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