chicmuscle said:
frosty or anyone else who knows,
lets say i have 3 oz of raw meat. do i calculate the calories it contains with the raw weight or the cooked weight? meat usually looses weight once cooked.
how much raw will equal 3 oz cooked? for chx or beef.
i have been only calculating the cooked weight for calories/protein/fat etc. but i dont know if thats right.
accuracy is a virtue
chichy
Well, there are several variables, so I don't think there's a cut and dry answer.
For one, when meat is cooked a lot of water is cooked off. This will reduce the weight, but it will not affect the calories at all.
The next variable is how much fat actually drains off during cooking. This will be dependant on the type of fat, how long it is cooked, and the place it is in the meat, and how much fat there is. Bacon, for example, is very high in fat, and when you cook it for a decent time, a great deal of the fat cooks off (and you're left with bacon grease in the pan). A piece of raw bacon will have a LOT more calories than a cooked piece of bacon, but a steak cooked medium rare won't have much more calories as a raw steak.
If you cook something and grease is visible in the pan after cooking, then it might be a good idea to calculate the calories as cooked weight. Fatty ground beef, chicken wings, and bacon would all have grease bake off, and this would change the calories, so these meats you might want to calculate the cooked amount. Lean meats such as buffalo, chicken, etc, don't have much fat to bake off so calories aren't likely changed much (not enough to worry about, IMO).
