Chicken with 85 grams of protein?

I created a recipe using 763 grams of raw boneless skinless chicken breast. I cooked the chicken in the air fryer with no additional oil. After the chicken was cooked, I re-weighted it at 563 grams and put that amount as the serving amount.
Today when I logged my meal; I chose my recipe & entered in my serving size 203 which was the weight of the chicken in grams.
The total came to 303 calories with 3 grams of fat and 85 grams of protein.

Did I do this correctly? Was there really 85 grams of protein in my chicken?

Replies

  • nanastaci2020
    nanastaci2020 Posts: 1,072 Member
    One thing I can't understand: there are so many listings for raw, skinless, boneless chicken breast and I never know what is correct. I use chicken that has been pretty well trimmed of the fat but do not want to count too low. Different database entries range from about 25-45 calories per ounce which is a big range!

    To err on the side of caution I try to use the higher one, 45 calories and 9 grams of protein per 1 ounce (28 grams) of raw meat.

    I believe that you consumed 203 grams (cooked weight) of the original amount you cooked in the air fryer. That is 203/563 or about 36% of the original 763g raw chicken. So rounding off for niceness, about 280 grams or 10 oz was the raw weight of the chicken you consumed today. I believe that would come out to about 450 calories and 90 grams of protein.

    But again, I go for the entry that is on the high end (45 calories per 1 oz raw) and there are other entries that have it lower. But for your question, I believe your protein read is about right.

    Logically speaking the 45 cals per ounce is probably more appropriate for the chicken breast that has not been trimmed of majority of the fat bits. And a lower value for chicken breast that has been well trimmed. But again, I use the higher value to be safe.
  • nanastaci2020
    nanastaci2020 Posts: 1,072 Member
    One quick thought though - 3 grams of fat = 27 calories and 85 grams protein = 340 calories. So your total would be in the neighborhood of 370ish calories.

    Based on that you may want to look for a different entry for the chicken.
  • Maxxitt
    Maxxitt Posts: 1,281 Member
    https://www.fsis.usda.gov/shared/PDF/Chicken_Turkey_Nutrition_Facts.pdf 25g protein/84 g of cooked chicken breast. Time was when you could look up USDA easily for raw product that is skinless and boneless, but everything's been redone and is, to my thinking, completely inaccessible. So the figures I quoted probably include skin but your 203g serving size comes to about 60 g protein.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,846 Member
    edited July 2020
    I created a recipe using 763 grams of raw boneless skinless chicken breast. I cooked the chicken in the air fryer with no additional oil. After the chicken was cooked, I re-weighted it at 563 grams and put that amount as the serving amount.
    Today when I logged my meal; I chose my recipe & entered in my serving size 203 which was the weight of the chicken in grams.
    The total came to 303 calories with 3 grams of fat and 85 grams of protein.

    Did I do this correctly? Was there really 85 grams of protein in my chicken?

    What is the exact entry you used for the raw chicken? "Chicken, broiler or fryers, breast, skinless, boneless, meat only, raw" is the USDA entry https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/171077/nutrients and has a corresponding entry in the MFP database.

    FWIW, "Chicken, broilers or fryers, breast, meat only, cooked, roasted, 203.0 g" has 63 g of protein.

    ps - when I create a recipe using the numbers you gave with the raw entry above I get 62 g protein:

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  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,846 Member
    Here's my standard answer about the database entries:

    Unfortunately, the green check marks in the MFP database are used for both user-created entries and admin-created entries that MFP pulled from the USDA database. To find admin entries for whole foods, I get the syntax from the USDA database and paste that into MFP.

    The USDA changed the platform for their database in 2019 and it is unfortunately a little more difficult to use. I uncheck everything but SR Legacy - that seems to be what MFP used to pull in entries.

    Note: any MFP entry that includes "USDA" was user entered.

    For packaged foods, I verify the label against what I find in MFP. (Alas, you cannot just scan with your phone and assume what you get is correct.)

    Sometimes there are decimal errors with the system entries - the values supposedly for 1 g of "Chicken, broiler or fryers, breast, skinless, boneless, meat only, raw" are actually for 100 g. These are easy to spot, so I still go with system entries as much as possible.

    However, I would NEVER pay for Premium while the database is this glitchy and cluttered. But we have badges now! Priorities... O_o
  • RockingWithLJ
    RockingWithLJ Posts: 243 Member
    I thought that was roughly 30 grams of protein per hundred grams of chicken weight. What I don't understand is you're supposed to weigh it raw and log that. Maybe i misread this because im not sure what exactly why youd reweigh it after cooking if you already had the reading
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,899 Member
    I thought that was roughly 30 grams of protein per hundred grams of chicken weight. What I don't understand is you're supposed to weigh it raw and log that. Maybe i misread this because im not sure what exactly why youd reweigh it after cooking if you already had the reading

    You can weigh raw or cooked so long as you use the right entry. Weighing after cooked is handy if the chicken has bones in, as you don't count the bones.
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,899 Member
    Yeah, there's variation. Since IMO chicken is either properly cooked or not, I assume it's to a done but still tasty doneness. I think there's less variation on how people like their chicken cooked than, say, beef.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 27,846 Member
    I thought that was roughly 30 grams of protein per hundred grams of chicken weight. What I don't understand is you're supposed to weigh it raw and log that. Maybe i misread this because im not sure what exactly why youd reweigh it after cooking if you already had the reading

    I use the raw weight when I'm going to eat the whole amount or when I'm adding the meat to a recipe.

    Did you see my post asking you what entry you used for raw chicken? I think the problem is that you did not use a correct entry.
  • josh250to180
    josh250to180 Posts: 32 Member
    edited July 2020
    The leanest chicken has protein content of about 26 g per 112 g of chicken. That’s 1/4 lb serving (1 lb = 454 g).

    If you had half a lb of chicken, it would give you about 52 g of protein.

    There are 4 calories in each gram of protein. 85x4= 340 calories, so yes, something is off there, especially when you add the fat content, which is close as you have it, but there are 9 calories per gram of fat. So...if you consider that all this is attributable to pre-cooked chicken, which it is, then your math is about correct. One serving of meat loses about 1/4 of its mass when cooked, as you have measured 😁. Read the fine print next time Mcdonalds advertises a quarter pounder.

    So, you ate 3 servings of chicken, not 2.