Adventures in totally botching calorie counting: Velveeta shells and cheese
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Eh, I'd just weigh the final product and divide by three to get my single portion size. Will it be exact? No, but it will be close enough for one meal. If I were going to be eating that way for most of my meals, I'd probably try to figure out a way to measure it more precisely, but if it's just a once in a while kind of thing, I don't sweat it too much.
For me, the idea is to be precise enough over time to continue to lose weight but not obsess about the numbers so much that I stop enjoying making and eating the foods I love.
This is what I do and has always worked fine for me; but I also eat these foods very infrequently.1 -
MegaMooseEsq wrote: »autumnblade75 wrote: »I think you may not be taking into account that the weight on the box for a serving size is the dry weight of the packaged food. Your cooked macaroni is all swollen with water, and of course it weighs more than it did when it was dry - but it didn't gain calories from the water.
Aw shoot, obviously you're right. Well, that's it's own problem too, isn't it? I've been doing this for a while and am a pretty smart person if I do say so myself. The box doesn't even give a weight when prepared, so I'm supposed to try and measure with a cup (yeah right) or just eyeball a third of a box? And trust that's only 360 calories? No thanks!
This is going to seem like a long process, but here is what I do...I take the dry pasta and weight it....then calculate how many servings by dividing by the serving given (112 g in your case). Then after I cook it, I weight it again and divide by the number of servings I got from the dry measurement. I then portion out the new serving weight.
It's more work, but I always want to be sure and I never trust measuring my pasta or rice by cups.2 -
Duck_Puddle wrote: »MommaGem2017 wrote: »Duck_Puddle wrote: »Is the weight they list for a dry or cooked 112g? I would assume it's for dry and the actual cooked weight would be much higher (since the pasta absorbs water-the amount depending on how long you cook it). So if you want to get crazy with the dry/cooked weights, you'd want to weigh out 112g (of a combo of dry shells and sauce), cook the pasta, add the sauce then re-weigh the cooked product.
But-your point that packaged foods still need to be weighed is a good one as they are often quite off from the label.
This makes sense. If someone were cooking the whole box 9say for the family meal), then how would they go about figuring out one serving after cooking?
I would imagine... if it were 112g a serving and approx. 3 servings per box. I might measure out say exactly 3 servings 336g), cook it, weigh it again, and take 1/3 of the cooked product? Does that sound logical?
I'm not sure how that would work with the cheese sauce packet. I suppose it's possible but seems like a LOT of work. If I often cooked spaghetti for family dinners, I might go through the weighing process once to know (roughly) the cooked weight of a serving of pasta. But for something like this? I would just eyeball the 1/3-or if I had huge concerns, just take 1/3 of the total cooked package and know that's 360 calories.
Just prepare packages as stated & weigh & divide the finished product according to the # of serving sizes. If you want to make any changes to the package directions (add or leave out an ingredient), use the recipe builder to reflect how you actually made it. In the case of macaroni & cheese, I always make it with 1/2 the butter, skim milk, and with some extra cheese added. I just use the recipe builder with the dry pasta mix and each addition listed separately, choose my own number of serving sizes, and weigh out the serving accordingly. It might sound like a pain, but once you've got it in your database, you don't have redo it each time (except to tweak exact amounts, if necessary).1 -
Hah, I really appreciate all the comments figuring out how to do this right - I am still a novice when it comes to packaged foods for all that I've been calorie counting for a year now. I think I'll stick with my strategy of only eating packaged foods once every three months or so and (apparently) dramatically overestimating the calories when I do. So long as my trend line stay steady, I'm happy.3
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MegaMooseEsq wrote: »Hah, I really appreciate all the comments figuring out how to do this right - I am still a novice when it comes to packaged foods for all that I've been calorie counting for a year now. I think I'll stick with my strategy of only eating packaged foods once every three months or so and (apparently) dramatically overestimating the calories when I do. So long as my trend line stay steady, I'm happy.
The one that annoys me is Dole chopped salads. They only provide nutrition data/weight for the complete salad kit, but I often don't want to prepare the whole thing because we're not going to use it all right away. I wish they would mark each individually packaged component with it's own data, especially the dressings which is usually where most of the calories come from.
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The other trick is that, if you're going to be the only one eating that food and you're going to eat all of it eventually, you can eyeball 1/3, and trust that it'll even out after all three portions are consumed. It doesn't work so well at my house though, where all leftovers are rapidly devoured by the teens.
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Counting calories with pasta is challenging, isn't it? I've reached the point of weighing the water before I add the pasta and the pasta after I've drained the water, just to be sure I know where every gram is.2
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JeromeBarry1 wrote: »Counting calories with pasta is challenging, isn't it? I've reached the point of weighing the water before I add the pasta and the pasta after I've drained the water, just to be sure I know where every gram is.
Lol... OK, I'm sorry... that's obsessive!
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MegaMooseEsq wrote: »Hah, I really appreciate all the comments figuring out how to do this right - I am still a novice when it comes to packaged foods for all that I've been calorie counting for a year now. I think I'll stick with my strategy of only eating packaged foods once every three months or so and (apparently) dramatically overestimating the calories when I do. So long as my trend line stay steady, I'm happy.
The one that annoys me is Dole chopped salads. They only provide nutrition data/weight for the complete salad kit, but I often don't want to prepare the whole thing because we're not going to use it all right away. I wish they would mark each individually packaged component with it's own data, especially the dressings which is usually where most of the calories come from.
In cases like this, you can make negative entries in MFP. So, most of the time for those salads, I don't eat the almonds. So, I enter that I ate the whole dole salad. Then, I weigh the almonds and if say they're 28g, I add almonds to MFP and give them an entry of -28grams and it subtracts from the total.9 -
Duck_Puddle wrote: »MommaGem2017 wrote: »Duck_Puddle wrote: »Is the weight they list for a dry or cooked 112g? I would assume it's for dry and the actual cooked weight would be much higher (since the pasta absorbs water-the amount depending on how long you cook it). So if you want to get crazy with the dry/cooked weights, you'd want to weigh out 112g (of a combo of dry shells and sauce), cook the pasta, add the sauce then re-weigh the cooked product.
But-your point that packaged foods still need to be weighed is a good one as they are often quite off from the label.
This makes sense. If someone were cooking the whole box 9say for the family meal), then how would they go about figuring out one serving after cooking?
I would imagine... if it were 112g a serving and approx. 3 servings per box. I might measure out say exactly 3 servings 336g), cook it, weigh it again, and take 1/3 of the cooked product? Does that sound logical?
I'm not sure how that would work with the cheese sauce packet. I suppose it's possible but seems like a LOT of work. If I often cooked spaghetti for family dinners, I might go through the weighing process once to know (roughly) the cooked weight of a serving of pasta. But for something like this? I would just eyeball the 1/3-or if I had huge concerns, just take 1/3 of the total cooked package and know that's 360 calories.
For something like the sauce packet:- Put whole packet on scale.
- Zero.
- Snip/rip top off packet (I'm assuming it's one of those soft foil-y type).
- Put ripped off packet strip back on scale
- Squeeze out cheese goo.
- Put empty packet back on scale.
- Negative value on scale = weight of cheese goo.
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I'm going to throw my vote in for just eating a third of the finished product and tracking it as a serving (360cals)3
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Duck_Puddle wrote: »MommaGem2017 wrote: »Duck_Puddle wrote: »Is the weight they list for a dry or cooked 112g? I would assume it's for dry and the actual cooked weight would be much higher (since the pasta absorbs water-the amount depending on how long you cook it). So if you want to get crazy with the dry/cooked weights, you'd want to weigh out 112g (of a combo of dry shells and sauce), cook the pasta, add the sauce then re-weigh the cooked product.
But-your point that packaged foods still need to be weighed is a good one as they are often quite off from the label.
This makes sense. If someone were cooking the whole box 9say for the family meal), then how would they go about figuring out one serving after cooking?
I would imagine... if it were 112g a serving and approx. 3 servings per box. I might measure out say exactly 3 servings 336g), cook it, weigh it again, and take 1/3 of the cooked product? Does that sound logical?
I'm not sure how that would work with the cheese sauce packet. I suppose it's possible but seems like a LOT of work. If I often cooked spaghetti for family dinners, I might go through the weighing process once to know (roughly) the cooked weight of a serving of pasta. But for something like this? I would just eyeball the 1/3-or if I had huge concerns, just take 1/3 of the total cooked package and know that's 360 calories.
For something like the sauce packet:- Put whole packet on scale.
- Zero.
- Snip/rip top off packet (I'm assuming it's one of those soft foil-y type).
- Put ripped off packet strip back on scale
- Squeeze out cheese goo.
- Put empty packet back on scale.
- Negative value on scale = weight of cheese goo.
I don't understand the purpose of weighing the cheese packet. It doesn't help establish the calorie count unless separate nutrition data is provided for the packet (and I don't believe it is), and it's not really helpful in regards to the weight of the finished product, as weight usually changes from the cooking process. (Your instructions are fine though, as far as needing to know the exact weight of cheese goo ) 0 -
Duck_Puddle wrote: »MommaGem2017 wrote: »Duck_Puddle wrote: »Is the weight they list for a dry or cooked 112g? I would assume it's for dry and the actual cooked weight would be much higher (since the pasta absorbs water-the amount depending on how long you cook it). So if you want to get crazy with the dry/cooked weights, you'd want to weigh out 112g (of a combo of dry shells and sauce), cook the pasta, add the sauce then re-weigh the cooked product.
But-your point that packaged foods still need to be weighed is a good one as they are often quite off from the label.
This makes sense. If someone were cooking the whole box 9say for the family meal), then how would they go about figuring out one serving after cooking?
I would imagine... if it were 112g a serving and approx. 3 servings per box. I might measure out say exactly 3 servings 336g), cook it, weigh it again, and take 1/3 of the cooked product? Does that sound logical?
I'm not sure how that would work with the cheese sauce packet. I suppose it's possible but seems like a LOT of work. If I often cooked spaghetti for family dinners, I might go through the weighing process once to know (roughly) the cooked weight of a serving of pasta. But for something like this? I would just eyeball the 1/3-or if I had huge concerns, just take 1/3 of the total cooked package and know that's 360 calories.
For something like the sauce packet:- Put whole packet on scale.
- Zero.
- Snip/rip top off packet (I'm assuming it's one of those soft foil-y type).
- Put ripped off packet strip back on scale
- Squeeze out cheese goo.
- Put empty packet back on scale.
- Negative value on scale = weight of cheese goo.
I don't understand the purpose of weighing the cheese packet. It doesn't help establish the calorie count unless separate nutrition data is provided for the packet (and I don't believe it is), and it's not really helpful in regards to the weight of the finished product, as weight usually changes from the cooking process. (Your instructions are fine though, as far as needing to know the exact weight of cheese goo )
Presumably you could snip first, then zero, then squeeze, then weigh. I use this trick for mayo and I don't include the lid when I zero out.
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MegaMooseEsq wrote: »Duck_Puddle wrote: »MommaGem2017 wrote: »Duck_Puddle wrote: »Is the weight they list for a dry or cooked 112g? I would assume it's for dry and the actual cooked weight would be much higher (since the pasta absorbs water-the amount depending on how long you cook it). So if you want to get crazy with the dry/cooked weights, you'd want to weigh out 112g (of a combo of dry shells and sauce), cook the pasta, add the sauce then re-weigh the cooked product.
But-your point that packaged foods still need to be weighed is a good one as they are often quite off from the label.
This makes sense. If someone were cooking the whole box 9say for the family meal), then how would they go about figuring out one serving after cooking?
I would imagine... if it were 112g a serving and approx. 3 servings per box. I might measure out say exactly 3 servings 336g), cook it, weigh it again, and take 1/3 of the cooked product? Does that sound logical?
I'm not sure how that would work with the cheese sauce packet. I suppose it's possible but seems like a LOT of work. If I often cooked spaghetti for family dinners, I might go through the weighing process once to know (roughly) the cooked weight of a serving of pasta. But for something like this? I would just eyeball the 1/3-or if I had huge concerns, just take 1/3 of the total cooked package and know that's 360 calories.
For something like the sauce packet:- Put whole packet on scale.
- Zero.
- Snip/rip top off packet (I'm assuming it's one of those soft foil-y type).
- Put ripped off packet strip back on scale
- Squeeze out cheese goo.
- Put empty packet back on scale.
- Negative value on scale = weight of cheese goo.
I don't understand the purpose of weighing the cheese packet. It doesn't help establish the calorie count unless separate nutrition data is provided for the packet (and I don't believe it is), and it's not really helpful in regards to the weight of the finished product, as weight usually changes from the cooking process. (Your instructions are fine though, as far as needing to know the exact weight of cheese goo )
Presumably you could snip first, then zero, then squeeze, then weigh. I use this trick for mayo and I don't include the lid when I zero out.
Yes, but whatever method you use, *why* weigh the cheese sauce?0 -
MegaMooseEsq wrote: »Duck_Puddle wrote: »MommaGem2017 wrote: »Duck_Puddle wrote: »Is the weight they list for a dry or cooked 112g? I would assume it's for dry and the actual cooked weight would be much higher (since the pasta absorbs water-the amount depending on how long you cook it). So if you want to get crazy with the dry/cooked weights, you'd want to weigh out 112g (of a combo of dry shells and sauce), cook the pasta, add the sauce then re-weigh the cooked product.
But-your point that packaged foods still need to be weighed is a good one as they are often quite off from the label.
This makes sense. If someone were cooking the whole box 9say for the family meal), then how would they go about figuring out one serving after cooking?
I would imagine... if it were 112g a serving and approx. 3 servings per box. I might measure out say exactly 3 servings 336g), cook it, weigh it again, and take 1/3 of the cooked product? Does that sound logical?
I'm not sure how that would work with the cheese sauce packet. I suppose it's possible but seems like a LOT of work. If I often cooked spaghetti for family dinners, I might go through the weighing process once to know (roughly) the cooked weight of a serving of pasta. But for something like this? I would just eyeball the 1/3-or if I had huge concerns, just take 1/3 of the total cooked package and know that's 360 calories.
For something like the sauce packet:- Put whole packet on scale.
- Zero.
- Snip/rip top off packet (I'm assuming it's one of those soft foil-y type).
- Put ripped off packet strip back on scale
- Squeeze out cheese goo.
- Put empty packet back on scale.
- Negative value on scale = weight of cheese goo.
I don't understand the purpose of weighing the cheese packet. It doesn't help establish the calorie count unless separate nutrition data is provided for the packet (and I don't believe it is), and it's not really helpful in regards to the weight of the finished product, as weight usually changes from the cooking process. (Your instructions are fine though, as far as needing to know the exact weight of cheese goo )
Presumably you could snip first, then zero, then squeeze, then weigh. I use this trick for mayo and I don't include the lid when I zero out.
Yes, but whatever method you use, *why* weigh the cheese sauce?
Hm. Good point, I suppose. I guess if you're trying to determine what an exact third of the package is? I assume most of the calories are in the cheese goo.
1 -
MegaMooseEsq wrote: »MegaMooseEsq wrote: »Duck_Puddle wrote: »MommaGem2017 wrote: »Duck_Puddle wrote: »Is the weight they list for a dry or cooked 112g? I would assume it's for dry and the actual cooked weight would be much higher (since the pasta absorbs water-the amount depending on how long you cook it). So if you want to get crazy with the dry/cooked weights, you'd want to weigh out 112g (of a combo of dry shells and sauce), cook the pasta, add the sauce then re-weigh the cooked product.
But-your point that packaged foods still need to be weighed is a good one as they are often quite off from the label.
This makes sense. If someone were cooking the whole box 9say for the family meal), then how would they go about figuring out one serving after cooking?
I would imagine... if it were 112g a serving and approx. 3 servings per box. I might measure out say exactly 3 servings 336g), cook it, weigh it again, and take 1/3 of the cooked product? Does that sound logical?
I'm not sure how that would work with the cheese sauce packet. I suppose it's possible but seems like a LOT of work. If I often cooked spaghetti for family dinners, I might go through the weighing process once to know (roughly) the cooked weight of a serving of pasta. But for something like this? I would just eyeball the 1/3-or if I had huge concerns, just take 1/3 of the total cooked package and know that's 360 calories.
For something like the sauce packet:- Put whole packet on scale.
- Zero.
- Snip/rip top off packet (I'm assuming it's one of those soft foil-y type).
- Put ripped off packet strip back on scale
- Squeeze out cheese goo.
- Put empty packet back on scale.
- Negative value on scale = weight of cheese goo.
I don't understand the purpose of weighing the cheese packet. It doesn't help establish the calorie count unless separate nutrition data is provided for the packet (and I don't believe it is), and it's not really helpful in regards to the weight of the finished product, as weight usually changes from the cooking process. (Your instructions are fine though, as far as needing to know the exact weight of cheese goo )
Presumably you could snip first, then zero, then squeeze, then weigh. I use this trick for mayo and I don't include the lid when I zero out.
Yes, but whatever method you use, *why* weigh the cheese sauce?
Hm. Good point, I suppose. I guess if you're trying to determine what an exact third of the package is? I assume most of the calories are in the cheese goo.
Well - I would totally do the math for you if I had a box of the product in front of me. Most dried pasta has a very similar calorie count of 200 calories per 2 oz. (dry) serving. You could weigh the pasta, calculate the calories, and then subtract from the total calorie count of the prepared box to find the calorie count of the packet of cheese goo.0 -
autumnblade75 wrote: »MegaMooseEsq wrote: »MegaMooseEsq wrote: »Duck_Puddle wrote: »MommaGem2017 wrote: »Duck_Puddle wrote: »Is the weight they list for a dry or cooked 112g? I would assume it's for dry and the actual cooked weight would be much higher (since the pasta absorbs water-the amount depending on how long you cook it). So if you want to get crazy with the dry/cooked weights, you'd want to weigh out 112g (of a combo of dry shells and sauce), cook the pasta, add the sauce then re-weigh the cooked product.
But-your point that packaged foods still need to be weighed is a good one as they are often quite off from the label.
This makes sense. If someone were cooking the whole box 9say for the family meal), then how would they go about figuring out one serving after cooking?
I would imagine... if it were 112g a serving and approx. 3 servings per box. I might measure out say exactly 3 servings 336g), cook it, weigh it again, and take 1/3 of the cooked product? Does that sound logical?
I'm not sure how that would work with the cheese sauce packet. I suppose it's possible but seems like a LOT of work. If I often cooked spaghetti for family dinners, I might go through the weighing process once to know (roughly) the cooked weight of a serving of pasta. But for something like this? I would just eyeball the 1/3-or if I had huge concerns, just take 1/3 of the total cooked package and know that's 360 calories.
For something like the sauce packet:- Put whole packet on scale.
- Zero.
- Snip/rip top off packet (I'm assuming it's one of those soft foil-y type).
- Put ripped off packet strip back on scale
- Squeeze out cheese goo.
- Put empty packet back on scale.
- Negative value on scale = weight of cheese goo.
I don't understand the purpose of weighing the cheese packet. It doesn't help establish the calorie count unless separate nutrition data is provided for the packet (and I don't believe it is), and it's not really helpful in regards to the weight of the finished product, as weight usually changes from the cooking process. (Your instructions are fine though, as far as needing to know the exact weight of cheese goo )
Presumably you could snip first, then zero, then squeeze, then weigh. I use this trick for mayo and I don't include the lid when I zero out.
Yes, but whatever method you use, *why* weigh the cheese sauce?
Hm. Good point, I suppose. I guess if you're trying to determine what an exact third of the package is? I assume most of the calories are in the cheese goo.
Well - I would totally do the math for you if I had a box of the product in front of me. Most dried pasta has a very similar calorie count of 200 calories per 2 oz. (dry) serving. You could weigh the pasta, calculate the calories, and then subtract from the total calorie count of the prepared box to find the calorie count of the packet of cheese goo.
I ate my last box last night or I'd try out your instructions.
No worries - it's mostly an academic question to keep my mind busy while I'm home with an injured dog. 1 -
@MegaMooseEsq I hope your dog feels better, soon.
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autumnblade75 wrote: »@MegaMooseEsq I hope your dog feels better, soon.
Thanks. I can tell he's feeling better because he's whining like a jerk and scratching at the door when I leave him alone for five minutes instead of sleeping all day like he did the last three weeks.2 -
need2belean wrote: »MegaMooseEsq wrote: »Hah, I really appreciate all the comments figuring out how to do this right - I am still a novice when it comes to packaged foods for all that I've been calorie counting for a year now. I think I'll stick with my strategy of only eating packaged foods once every three months or so and (apparently) dramatically overestimating the calories when I do. So long as my trend line stay steady, I'm happy.
The one that annoys me is Dole chopped salads. They only provide nutrition data/weight for the complete salad kit, but I often don't want to prepare the whole thing because we're not going to use it all right away. I wish they would mark each individually packaged component with it's own data, especially the dressings which is usually where most of the calories come from.
In cases like this, you can make negative entries in MFP. So, most of the time for those salads, I don't eat the almonds. So, I enter that I ate the whole dole salad. Then, I weigh the almonds and if say they're 28g, I add almonds to MFP and give them an entry of -28grams and it subtracts from the total.
OMG, I never knew you can add a negative item.1
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