Weighing Food

mamabear1114
mamabear1114 Posts: 140 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Do you record the pre or post cooked weight?
Meat?
Veggies?
Help!
«1

Replies

  • fitoverfortymom
    fitoverfortymom Posts: 3,452 Member
    edited January 2018
    precooked whenever possible.

    bacon, always cooked.
  • OhMsDiva
    OhMsDiva Posts: 1,073 Member
    I think it depends on what it is. Im sure the purists will say weigh everything raw. I hardly every weigh raw meat. Then again I hardly ever deal with raw meat. I do not weigh veggies so I am not help with that either. If it is potatoes or sweet potatoes I will weigh them before I cook them. Whether it is cooked or raw I just use the appropriate listing for the food.
  • Lift_Run_Eat
    Lift_Run_Eat Posts: 986 Member
    Always pre-cooked, if I can
  • besaro
    besaro Posts: 1,858 Member
    pre.
  • etherealanwar
    etherealanwar Posts: 465 Member
    I weigh everything pre-cooked.
  • callsitlikeiseeit
    callsitlikeiseeit Posts: 8,626 Member
    precooked whenever possible.
  • motivatedmartha
    motivatedmartha Posts: 1,108 Member
    Precooked if I can - once it's cooked I want to eat it all and woud hate to weight it and find it was bigger than I thought! :) If we are having a joint with the family I weigh my portion cooked. Recipes like bolognaise I weigh all the ingredients, cook and then divide the mixture to give me my portion.
  • JeromeBarry1
    JeromeBarry1 Posts: 10,179 Member
    Just this morning I wondered about my breakfast sausage. The Jimmy Dean site clearly states that a serving of 2 cooked patties (56 g) of Regular is 180 calories. The plethora of myfitnesspal food database listings for that brand and that flavor of sausage mostly don't indicate the cooked condition, the gram portion, or the calories in the portion correctly.
  • steveko89
    steveko89 Posts: 2,223 Member
    USDA stated values are for pre-cooked weight unless otherwise stated.
  • murp4069
    murp4069 Posts: 494 Member
    Precooked or raw whenever possible unless the label indicates that the nutrition information is for a cooked portion.
  • jennybearlv
    jennybearlv Posts: 1,519 Member
    Raw whenever possible, with the exception of foods that lose a large amount of fat like bacon. The reasoning behind this is that different cooking methods add or remove different amounts of water. For instance, a boiled chicken breast will end up weighing more after cooking than a broiled chicken breast even though they weighed the same raw.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    steveko89 wrote: »
    USDA stated values are for pre-cooked weight unless otherwise stated.

    USDA values are normally clear about which they mean. (For example, "strawberries, raw" or "chicken, broilers and fryers, breast, meat only, cooked, dry heat."

    Information on a package is going to be the condition it is in in the package unless it says otherwise (bacon commonly gives the cooked value, but says so).

    OP, it doesn't matter so long as you choose an entry for the state it is when you weigh it.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 33,792 Member
    Mostly: if you weigh/measure uncooked food, log it with an accurate raw/uncooked entry from the MFP database.

    If you weigh/measure cooked food, use an accurate entry for cooked . . . ideally one specific to your cooking method (100g of steamed poached "whatever" will often have fewer calories than 100g of roasted "whatever", because there's less water in the weight of the latter).

    Unless, of course, the MFP user who created that "roasted whatever" database entry included the calories for the oil they used to coat their "whatever".

    Reading between the lines, perhaps you can see why many of us prefer to used uncooked weights: Less inconsistency due to amount of water, cooking oil included or no, etc.
  • SolotoCEO
    SolotoCEO Posts: 293 Member
    Foods that contain a lot of water will shrink in weight when cooked (which includes, meats, veggies, etc.). I always weigh post cooking for the most accurate weight of what I'm actually eating. The big exception here is pasta/rice which should always be measured dry (depending on how long you cook it and how much water is absorbed - a big difference in weight but not in calories). Weighing pre-cooked will give you more calories than you are actually consuming in most cases.
  • Momepro
    Momepro Posts: 1,509 Member
    I never know how much I'll want, so I generally weigh after cooked and on plate.
  • steveko89
    steveko89 Posts: 2,223 Member
    Momepro wrote: »
    I never know how much I'll want, so I generally weigh after cooked and on plate.

    Alternatively, you could weigh the entire uncooked portion, weigh the entire cooked portion, weigh the cooked portion you consume so you know the correct proportion of what you consumed vs. the amount you prepared and record the correct proportion.
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
    Depends what is the most convenient. What is important is to use accurate entries (ALWAYS pick entries that specify cooked or raw).
  • andfivesixseveneight
    andfivesixseveneight Posts: 140 Member
    I will weigh everything raw when possible, then decide on portion size once it’s cooked. So if it’s 400gm raw, and after cooking it I eat only eat half, I log for 200gm raw.
  • shannonprovenzano2812
    shannonprovenzano2812 Posts: 60 Member
    I've been weighing it cooked for years. After reading the replies that's probably not the right way, but I'm still not weighing it raw lol. I usually log my food as "cooked chicken" or "cooked pasta" anyway.
  • Momepro
    Momepro Posts: 1,509 Member
    steveko89 wrote: »
    Momepro wrote: »
    I never know how much I'll want, so I generally weigh after cooked and on plate.

    Alternatively, you could weigh the entire uncooked portion, weigh the entire cooked portion, weigh the cooked portion you consume so you know the correct proportion of what you consumed vs. the amount you prepared and record the correct proportion.

    I could... But then that would be math. :D

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