Log protein portions before or after cooking?

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If you really want to be accurate, weigh raw.

BUT

What's more important is that you use the database entry that MATCHES how you weighed it. There are separate database entries for raw and cooked meat. If you weigh raw but use a cooked entry, you'll overlog calories and protein. If you weigh cooked but enter a raw entry, you'll UNDERlog calories and protein.

The only reason raw is more accurate is that different people will cook more or less moisture out of the meat depending on their preference. The database entries are average but ... average isn't accurate for most people.

AFTER you cook it. You are weighing what you are consuming not the addititional additives. Many meat producers add liquids to meat to charge nigher prices as a result federal regulations had to be put in place to limit the practice. If you weigh b4 cooking you will not have accurate measurements

If I'm adding it to a recipe I weight it raw.

If I'm eating basically as is (hamburgers, baked chicken breast) I weigh it cooked.

TavistockToad wrote: »

tiptoppy wrote: »

When logging oz of chicken, salmon, beef, etc, is it more accurate to weigh it when it’s raw or after cooking? Sometimes a 5 oz raw chicken breast is half the size after cooking!

weigh it raw, log it raw, weigh it cooked, log it cooked.

This. If you buy fattier cuts and tend to strain/drain the juices, cooked is probably more accurate. Leaner cuts, or using the fat/other juices with the protein, I prefer to weigh and log raw.

Detritus_1965 wrote: »

crazyravr wrote: »

Log everything raw and uncooked. Everything.

^^This^^

no not that.

If you weigh it cooked log it cooked...the way it was cooked. Double check with USDA.
If you weigh it raw log it raw

I can't weigh raw...I don't cook for 1.

tiptoppy wrote: »

When logging oz of chicken, salmon, beef, etc, is it more accurate to weigh it when it’s raw or after cooking? Sometimes a 5 oz raw chicken breast is half the size after cooking!

If you weight it raw, select a raw entry from the database. If you weigh it cooked, select a cooked entry from the database. They're both fairly accurate so long as you're selecting the right entry from the database.

So like 4 oz of raw chicken breast contains about 120 calories...you cook it, and it's going to weigh less because it loses water...but it doesn't lose calories...your now 3 oz of cooked chicken breast still has 120 calories.

I tend to feel that raw weight is more accurate simply for the fact that the nutritional label assumes raw weight...but I've often had to weigh cooked and just used a cooked entry from the database and never had issue.