Weighing food, before or after cooking?

shelbiescott
shelbiescott Posts: 5 Member
in Food and Nutrition
So ive just had a roast dinner, mainly veg, my question is do you weight the food before or after its cooked?

I weighed it all after cooking as i plated which means it came out at just over 700 cals, which seems a hell of a lot but wondered if that was mainly water weight?

Im curious on how others do it, thank you
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Replies

  • maykatcooper21
    maykatcooper21 Posts: 2 Member
    I’ve been instructed in several different programs to weigh beforehand unless a recipe calls for a cooked meat, ie shredded cooked chicken… like you said, water-weight accounts for a lot.
  • Hiawassee88
    Hiawassee88 Posts: 35,754 Member
    Some weigh before cooking because a lot of the water evaporates during the cooking process. Pasta is one food that most weigh before cooking. Macros on labels are usually uncooked portions.
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,839 Member
    Most food database entries are raw food, so weighing cooked will not be correct (some foods lose water and less for the same amount of calories when cooked, others absorb moisture and will weigh more when cooked for the same amount of calories).
    If you do weigh food cooked, use a food database entry specifically for a cooked version of that food (specified in the name of the food).
  • shelbiescott
    shelbiescott Posts: 5 Member
    That makes loads of sense! Thanks guys :)
    Id reply to you all indiviually but i cant figure out how haha
  • capgordon1293
    capgordon1293 Posts: 149 Member
    I love vegetables best thing I love about them is that there's no limit to how much greens you can have
  • ehju0901
    ehju0901 Posts: 394 Member
    Good post, I've been weighing cooked so I'm glad I read this!
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    The nutritional information for most foods are provided as "raw" or "dry". With something like a roast it's pretty much impossible to do that so you would want to look for an entry in the database that is "cooked" and use that weight. If you use a raw weight for meat that is cooked you're going to be way off because meats lose a lot of water while cooking.
  • ktilton70130
    ktilton70130 Posts: 211 Member
    depends on what I am preparing for example my meats i weigh them after just read labels, when in doubt use cooked

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