Adventures in totally botching calorie counting: Velveeta shells and cheese
MegaMooseEsq
Posts: 3,118 Member
ETA: well, clearly the moral of this story is actually that a post-graduate degree and above average reading skills will still lead you astray when reading nutritional information on boxes. I feel rather silly, but I'll leave this here as an additional cautionary tale. And I think I'll just avoid pasta for a while. 
ETA2: I just realized that I probably overestimated my calories last night, too - hey, bonus deficit! Well, if one is going to publically botch calorie counting, might as well over do it than under do it!
In the few weeks since I started hanging around here, I've seen a lot of people talk about how vital weighing food is. I bought a scale a while ago and have been weighing most foods, but I had a real eye opening moment last night that I wanted to share. I was feeling lazy and wanted some comfort food, so I made an old favorite: Velveeta shells and cheese. The package says a serving is about a cup, which has about 360 calories, and the box makes about three cups total. Sounds good to me!
Ah, I thought, but I am smarter now, and it says a serving is also 4 ounces, or 112 grams. I often use ounces to measure, but figured I'd go for grams this time, as 4 seemed a little suspiciously round. So I weighed out 112 grams, and was shocked to find it wasn't even close to a third of the prepared pasta. My portion looked so small! Well, I generally eat more than 360 calories for dinner, so I figured I'd round up to about 500 calories, or 154 grams. This was basically two spoonfuls more, and it still didn't seem like I'd made much of a dent in the pot, but I really don't need more than 500 calories for dinner and so I decided to trust my scale.
After I ate my delicious but disappointingly not very filling dinner, I decided to weigh the leftovers. I'd already eaten more than the 112 serving that was supposed to be one of "about" three. The leftovers weighted 396 g. Basically, the box cooked up to almost five 360 calorie servings. If I'd tried to eyeball a third, as I have done many times before, I'd have ended up with close to 600 calories, not 360, and that's assuming I accurately eyeballed a third in the first place. Ouch.
So that's my cautionary tale. Thanks for all the excellent posts explaining why it's so important not to eyeball your portions. I'm a believer now, for sure!
ETA2: I just realized that I probably overestimated my calories last night, too - hey, bonus deficit! Well, if one is going to publically botch calorie counting, might as well over do it than under do it!
In the few weeks since I started hanging around here, I've seen a lot of people talk about how vital weighing food is. I bought a scale a while ago and have been weighing most foods, but I had a real eye opening moment last night that I wanted to share. I was feeling lazy and wanted some comfort food, so I made an old favorite: Velveeta shells and cheese. The package says a serving is about a cup, which has about 360 calories, and the box makes about three cups total. Sounds good to me!
Ah, I thought, but I am smarter now, and it says a serving is also 4 ounces, or 112 grams. I often use ounces to measure, but figured I'd go for grams this time, as 4 seemed a little suspiciously round. So I weighed out 112 grams, and was shocked to find it wasn't even close to a third of the prepared pasta. My portion looked so small! Well, I generally eat more than 360 calories for dinner, so I figured I'd round up to about 500 calories, or 154 grams. This was basically two spoonfuls more, and it still didn't seem like I'd made much of a dent in the pot, but I really don't need more than 500 calories for dinner and so I decided to trust my scale.
After I ate my delicious but disappointingly not very filling dinner, I decided to weigh the leftovers. I'd already eaten more than the 112 serving that was supposed to be one of "about" three. The leftovers weighted 396 g. Basically, the box cooked up to almost five 360 calorie servings. If I'd tried to eyeball a third, as I have done many times before, I'd have ended up with close to 600 calories, not 360, and that's assuming I accurately eyeballed a third in the first place. Ouch.
So that's my cautionary tale. Thanks for all the excellent posts explaining why it's so important not to eyeball your portions. I'm a believer now, for sure!
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Replies
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Wow! That is a very helpful story! I have finally come to the conclusion that I can never again 'eyeball' food because I have no intuitive sense for portion sizes and I would have believed the box.
I just realized something similar with prepacked frozen meals. The weight of the actual food can very greatly.2 -
Found this out the hard way with salmon. I was eating 100 more calories than I thought before I bought a food scale.1
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Are you sure the 112g didn't refer to the product unprepared?23
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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.4
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Yes, did you weight the pasta before or after you boiled it? I am fairly certain the 112g is referring to dry pasta.2
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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.3 -
Are you sure the 112g didn't refer to the product unprepared?
This is exactly what I was thinking as I read the OP. Generally when it comes to pasta (even pre-packaged pasta meals), the serving size is referring to the uncooked weight not the cooked weight. This is because pasta absorbs a lot of water when cooked, but the amount absorbed is quite variable, so the most precise way to measure it is before it is cooked.
While I have run into times when a pre-packaged food didn't measure up to it's supposed serving size, it's not usually too far off any time I've bothered to weigh it (and I've seen it go both ways - fewer grams per serving and more grams per serving than what the package indicated).0 -
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!1 -
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?2 -
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!
I don't make that specific kind of mac n' cheese - it's got a sauce packet and dry shells, yeah? But I don't even prepare mine according to the directions on the box, so it's handy to have calorie info for "boxed" vs. "as prepared"
I go ahead and calculate how many calories went into the pan, then, divide it up (by eyeball, generally - I do that) into equal portions and divide how many calories total by how many servings I've decided that is.3 -
You can always weigh the entire cooked product, and know that 1/3 of whatever that weight is will be your 360 calories. The box is 12 oz, so you know the info they provide is for 1/3 of the product. You're adding water to cook so no additional calories. 1/3 of whatever the total weight is should be 360 calories.8
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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?
Yesh, I'm sitting here trying to figure out how I was actually supposed to weigh this with any sort of accuracy - sure I can weigh the dry noodles, but what about the cheese sauce? That sounds like a mess and a hassle. And it's not like there are directions for cooking just one serving - you're supposed to do the whole box, or else buy the single serving ones that never taste as good in the first place.0 -
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.
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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!
Weigh the whole prepared amount. Divide by 3. Portion out that much.
If you know the weight of your pot you can weigh the whole pot of food and subtract the weight of the pot before dividing. It is useful to know the weight of your pots and baking dishes.3 -
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.
Foods that become too difficult to log would just fall off my menu. @MegaMooseEsq you may have to look for new comfort food
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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.
Except for the bit about how a serving is "about" 1 cup, and there are "about" 3 servings...
What I do for that is: I edit the entry to reflect exactly how many servings are in the package, according to the stated weight. Example: I have a can of chili here that says a serving is 250 g, and there are "about" 2 servings in the can. The Net Weight of the can is 425 g. So I edit the closest entry in the database to reflect the container size as 425 g, and servings per container is (425/250 = ) 1.7. Then it's simpler to use "1 container" in a recipe. It even helps if I'm eating that food as a stand-alone - I feel that is less confusing (to me, anyway) than every time I eat 1/2 a can of chili to remember that I'm actually having 0.85 servings.
Edited because I accidentally made an emoticon out of punctuation.2 -
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.8 -
What I would do in a situation like this is weigh out the food prepared as a whole, and calculate a third of the prepared weight and eat that. It would be the easiest way to make sure you're making equal sized portions -- weighing it unprepared with the cheese sauce would be a mess2
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I have all my pots & cooking dishes weighed & keep a list on my fridge. After I make a dish, I weigh it in the pan & subtract out the weight of the pan. Divide by # of serving sizes, voila.
As to regular pasta, I have found a cooked serving is almost always 3X the dry weight (without sauce or other ingredients, of course).2 -
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?
This is what I do with all of my packaged goods. I just make the whole container, weigh the cooked amount and divide that number by the servings on the box.2 -
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. 4
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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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