uncooked vs cooked weights

13ecca4
13ecca4 Posts: 201 Member
edited December 20 in Food and Nutrition
Can anyone help me out with whether I should be weighing and logging dry or cooked food?
I think I’ve been doing it all wrong. I’ve been weighing the dry food.

I went to do some bulk cooking at weekend and did 4 portions of rice at 80g per portion. I took my lunch to work and my boss commented on how much rice there was. She’s really into her fitness and nutrition and has been helping me out getting started with this and exercise, she wasn’t being mean.

So last night I weighed out 80g of the cooked rice I’d made and it was barely anything but was still over 300 calories?

If the weights are the cooked weights, how do I know what to weigh out in the first place so the cooked weight will be 80g?

I try and scan most of my food in so I know I have the right product and nutritional values, will these been going off dry or cooked values?

Replies

  • Pebble321
    Pebble321 Posts: 6,423 Member
    You can use either - just make sure you are using an appropriate entry in the database - for raw rice, search for raw or dry rice, if it’s cooked, I’d probably use a steamed rice entry, but you can look for something that reflects how you cook rice, or use the recipe builder if you add stuff to it.
  • MikePTY
    MikePTY Posts: 3,814 Member
    It's best if you can to log as uncooked, because that is the most accurate. When you cook dry food, it adds water weight, and when you cook meats, et, it can lose water weight. Sometimes how much water varies depending on cooking time, so that's why uncooked is better.

    But if you can only weigh cooked food, do that, just make sure you are using the cooked entry instead of the raw entry. 80 grams of cooked rice is not 300 calories. You were probably using the dry entry for that. It is about 100 calories (half a cup) if you use a cook entry. As a side note, rice can definitely be incorporated as part of a weight loss diet. I live in Latin America and it's a regular staple here, and some days I eat a lot of it (I've had some days where I've eaten 680 grams cooked). Just make sure to portion control. 80g cooked is really not that much.
  • BattyKnitter
    BattyKnitter Posts: 503 Member
    edited March 2019
    I weigh everything I can raw, as other have said it is more accurate. Some things I weigh cooked instead are bone in meats where I won't be eating the whole cut, or pre-cooked things like rotisserie chicken, and also bacon because it shrinks so much. Just make sure you are using an accurate entry and be consistent.

    For things like rice or pasta where it is hard to estimate how much water they will absorb, I weigh raw. Then I cook, then weigh the whole amount I cooked and divide that by the number of portions.
  • RelCanonical
    RelCanonical Posts: 3,882 Member
    Ideally, you want to weigh raw, but when you cook, you should keep the proportion the same. So, if 80g dry is 300 calories, and cooked it comes out to 200g (assuming you just used water), then 100g cooked would be 150 calories (as it's half of the total cooked).
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,885 Member
    edited March 2019
    If you are using calories from the package and the package does not specify cooked for the calories, then you were doing it right to measure dry. Good rule of thumb is that 56 g of rice (or pasta) is about 200 cal. That's a typical serving size, so 80 g raw might look like a lot after cooking, but around 300 cal would be correct.

    If you aren't using package measures, go with the USDA entries which will specify cooked or dry. (Or for meat, cooked + cooking method or raw.)
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,052 Member
    13ecca4 wrote: »
    Can anyone help me out with whether I should be weighing and logging dry or cooked food?
    I think I’ve been doing it all wrong. I’ve been weighing the dry food.

    I went to do some bulk cooking at weekend and did 4 portions of rice at 80g per portion. I took my lunch to work and my boss commented on how much rice there was. She’s really into her fitness and nutrition and has been helping me out getting started with this and exercise, she wasn’t being mean.

    So last night I weighed out 80g of the cooked rice I’d made and it was barely anything but was still over 300 calories?

    If the weights are the cooked weights, how do I know what to weigh out in the first place so the cooked weight will be 80g?

    I try and scan most of my food in so I know I have the right product and nutritional values, will these been going off dry or cooked values?

    I'm confused because 80 grams of cooked rice is 104 calories when using this entry "Rice, white, long-grain, regular, cooked, unenriched, with salt", which I got from the USDA database and plugged into the MFP database.

    Did you mean you weighed the cooked rice that came from 80 g raw rice, which is now heavier?
  • wilson10102018
    wilson10102018 Posts: 1,306 Member
    No one size fits all. Sorry. Right answer for rice. Weigh it raw. Rice has the same calories after cooking even though it may vary significantly in weight. BTW, its calorie dense. That's why 4 billion people survive on a diet mostly of it. Try something else as a carrier for your protein.

    Bacon, on the other hand can't be reliably weighed raw unless it goes into a recipe raw, because up to half its calories will be left in the pan depending on user cooking preferences.

    I would tend to agree that raw is usually better, but, it depends. . . .
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