Discrepancy between logging raw and cooked chicken

Jbrehm87
Jbrehm87 Posts: 4 Member
in Food and Nutrition
I'm trying to keep accurate tabs on my macros and calories, but I'm getting unreliable results.

For example, last night I ate three chicken thighs with skin, roasted.
The original weight raw was 24.6oz
The cooked weight was 17.5oz
The bones left after I finished eating weighed 2.9oz
This comes out to a cooked meat/skin weight of 14.6oz

I tried a couple different ways to log the data, and I'm getting wildly different results, see the attached screenshots.

When I log the results as raw meat, I get 1541 calories, 116g fat, and 115g protein
When I log the results as roasted meat, I get 960 calories, 61g fat, and 96g protein

When I log the results as raw meat with a different option, the fat and protein contents are dramatically different at 1492 calories, 96g fat, and 164g protein

Looking through the different options available when searching for chicken thighs or breasts or beef products produces wildly different calorie and macro counts. What am I supposed to rely on? Especially when all of these options have also been supposedly verified.

Thanks for any and all help in figuring this out!

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Replies

  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,101 Member
    One thing to think of is that part of the day will render down when roasted - unless you actually consume the drippings rendered from the chicken, logging the roasted weight is probably more accurate.
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,101 Member
    PS I would ignore the last entry. The first two look like they came from the USDA food database, which is a good source of info (provided the entry is actually correct - you can look it up on the USDA website).
  • Jbrehm87
    Jbrehm87 Posts: 4 Member
    That's kind of what I was thinking also, but wouldn't the folks coming up with nutrition labels expect people to cook chicken thighs and expect those chicken thighs to render fat drippings? It doesn't make much sense to me...
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,101 Member
    Jbrehm87 wrote: »
    That's kind of what I was thinking also, but wouldn't the folks coming up with nutrition labels expect people to cook chicken thighs and expect those chicken thighs to render fat drippings? It doesn't make much sense to me...

    The cooked entry effectively has less fat than the raw entry, so I'm not sure what you mean?
  • Jbrehm87
    Jbrehm87 Posts: 4 Member
    Lietchi wrote: »
    Jbrehm87 wrote: »
    That's kind of what I was thinking also, but wouldn't the folks coming up with nutrition labels expect people to cook chicken thighs and expect those chicken thighs to render fat drippings? It doesn't make much sense to me...

    The cooked entry effectively has less fat than the raw entry, so I'm not sure what you mean?

    I get the idea of trying to provide nutrition information on raw meats on a "this is what is currently in the package" basis, but chicken is never eaten raw. And regardless of the way in which it's cooked, there will be a significant amount of fat rendering. It just doesn't make sense to me to list the nutrition of the rendered fat if isn't going to be used. But maybe I'm just overthinking it...

    I appreciate your help, thanks!
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,101 Member
    Because there are dishes where the fat is used, many ways to use chicken 😉
  • wilson10102018
    wilson10102018 Posts: 1,306 Member
    Raw chicken weight is appropriate only when the chicken is incorporated into a dish where all of it is eaten. Like stewed chicken.

    Unless you are drinking rendered chicken fat from roasted chicken which is not the norm, the raw weight is useless. The chicken renders mostly its fat at 9 calories per gram accounting for every bit of that 600 calories difference.
  • cmriverside
    cmriverside Posts: 33,937 Member
    The entries in the database are 99.9% entered by other users. They can input any numbers they want so you're going to find all kinds of errors and omissions. The database is a bit difficult to learn to use for that reason.

    I'd say always check things against the labels or in the USDA (or other countries' databases) before you use it. Lots of wrong foods are in the database here.

    Once you use one, then it will be in your "Recents" list when you are entering foods, so it is pretty important to me to get the right one the first time I use something.
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 9,961 Member
    For one thing, you forgot to subtract the weight of the bones when using the raw entry to calculate the calories. That won't account for all of the difference. Seems like you may have overcooked your chicken.

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