Serving size includes bone weight?

digidoomed
digidoomed Posts: 151 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Hi, trying to track everything I eat more accurately. Making chicken wings for everyone today in my air fryer. I was weighing out the pieces for myself on my scale as serving size is 4oz. My question is, does that include the weight of the bone? I'm not sure what the rule is when it comes to weighing foods that have bones in them, like drumsticks and wings. Obviously I am not going to eat the bone, so does that factor into the 4oz serving size? I remember a while ago I was making drumsticks and weighed the chicken on the bone and off it and it was a major difference.

Replies

  • foreverslim1111
    foreverslim1111 Posts: 2,604 Member
    What I do is weigh the chicken after cooking on a small plate on a small kitchen scale then, after eating, I weigh any waste like skin, fat and or bones left on my plate. And I keep the scale next to my plate at the table so I don't have to pop up and down from the table. Same thing with bone in any other meat. Subtract the difference and you can get the accurate weight of the meat you consumed. BTW I never do this in restaurants or in front of company. Trust me people will think you are weird/crazy. Then you can look up the meat and list it as "meat only" or "skinless/boneless"
  • digidoomed
    digidoomed Posts: 151 Member
    foreverslim1111 wrote: »
    What I do is weigh the chicken after cooking on a small plate on a small kitchen scale then, after eating, I weigh any waste like skin, fat and or bones left on my plate. And I keep the scale next to my plate at the table so I don't have to pop up and down from the table. Same thing with bone in any other meat. Subtract the difference and you can get the accurate weight of the meat you consumed. BTW I never do this in restaurants or in front of company. Trust me people will think you are weird/crazy. Then you can look up the meat and list it as "meat only" or "skinless/boneless"

    Oh yeah haha I don't imagine bringing the scale to the restaurant would be a good idea. I just usually weigh my food raw when I track, so I honestly was not sure about the bone density. I know the weight of the meat itself changes after you cook and people have told me the nutrition info refers to the food when it's raw. But your idea does seem like a good way to go about it. I'm not adding anything like butter/oil to the wings, just some seasonings so I really just have the content of the wing itself to track
  • dmkoenig
    dmkoenig Posts: 299 Member
    Weight refers to the edible portions, not the bone. If you ate a plateful of ribs you wouldn't include the massive amount of bones in the weight (and calories) that you actually consume.
  • digidoomed
    digidoomed Posts: 151 Member
    dmkoenig wrote: »
    Weight refers to the edible portions, not the bone. If you ate a plateful of ribs you wouldn't include the massive amount of bones in the weight (and calories) that you actually consume.

    How would you recommend to handle tracking? I weigh my food raw before cooking and I don't want to de-bone the chicken before cooking. I do like foreverSlim's suggestion but it applied to after the food is cooked
  • foreverslim1111
    foreverslim1111 Posts: 2,604 Member
    Dig - You can specify in your food diary entry that the meat you enter, is raw or cooked, with skin or skinless, bone in or boneless and even fat trimmed. The MFP data base will usually come back with entries that include all or any of those qualities. For example, if you specify "chicken wing weighed raw, with skin and bone" it will come back with the calories for cooked meat and skin that would have after cooking. I think my way of doing it is more accurate though. Try doing your entry that way and see what you get.
  • digidoomed
    digidoomed Posts: 151 Member
    edited August 2020
    foreverslim1111 wrote: »
    Dig - You can specify in your food diary entry that the meat you enter, is raw or cooked, with skin or skinless, bone in or boneless and even fat trimmed. The MFP data base will usually come back with entries that include all or any of those qualities. For example, if you specify "chicken wing weighed raw, with skin and bone" it will come back with the calories for cooked meat and skin that would have after cooking. I think my way of doing it is more accurate though. Try doing your entry that way and see what you get.

    Thank you! I do like your method and will be using it. I'm just so trained to weigh my food raw before cooking that I was looking for options there too, but I appreciate your help
  • Strudders67
    Strudders67 Posts: 978 Member
    digidoomed wrote: »
    dmkoenig wrote: »
    Weight refers to the edible portions, not the bone. If you ate a plateful of ribs you wouldn't include the massive amount of bones in the weight (and calories) that you actually consume.

    How would you recommend to handle tracking? I weigh my food raw before cooking and I don't want to de-bone the chicken before cooking. I do like foreverSlim's suggestion but it applied to after the food is cooked

    I weigh my food raw. After eating, I then weigh the bones (and any skin /fat not eaten) and deduct that from my original figure. Whilst the weight of the meat will change during cooking, I don't expect the bones to change much. The skin and fat may also have shrunk a bit but that's fine as it means I'm deducting less and therefore slightly overestimating how much meat I ate, which is preferable to under-estimating.
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,885 Member
    4 oz is the raw serving size (more like 3 oz cooked), but does not include the bone. I'd say ignore "serving size" and weigh cooked, absent the weight of the bones (pull off the meat or weigh and then weigh uneaten portions), and decide what the total cals you consider acceptable is to decide how much to eat.
  • ritzvin
    ritzvin Posts: 2,860 Member
    This is one instance where it might be easier to just use an entry per single chicken wing versus weight.

Categories