Should you weigh food raw or cooked?
Cooking changes how much food weighs but not how many calories it has. Mixing up raw and cooked numbers is the most common tracking mistake there is.
You weigh out 200 g of chicken, cook it, and log “200 g chicken breast”. Simple. Except it depends whether you weighed it before or after the pan, and the difference can be 30 percent or more.
Cooking changes weight, not calories
When you cook food, water moves in or out. The calories don’t change. Only the weight does.
- Meat and fish lose water. Chicken breast typically loses around a quarter of its weight. So 200 g raw becomes about 150 g cooked, with the same calories and protein.
- Rice, pasta and grains absorb water. 75 g of dry rice becomes roughly 200 to 225 g cooked. Dry pasta usually a bit more than doubles.
- Vegetables mostly lose water, especially when roasted.
That means the calories per 100 g are very different raw versus cooked:
| Food | Raw or dry, per 100 g | Cooked, per 100 g (approx.) |
|---|---|---|
| Chicken breast | about 106 cal | about 140 cal |
| White rice | about 355 cal | about 130 cal |
| Pasta | about 360 cal | about 160 cal |
Log 200 g of cooked rice using the dry rice entry and you’ve counted about 710 calories instead of about 260. Do the opposite with chicken and you undercount protein.
Why raw is the better habit
Raw weight is consistent. Cooked weight depends on how long you cooked it, the heat, the lid, and whether the rice sat in the pot for ten minutes. Two people cooking the same 100 g of rice can end up with quite different cooked weights.
So the best habit is: weigh raw, log raw. It’s also what nutrition panels on packets usually describe for things like rice, oats and pasta, which are sold dry.
When you can’t weigh it raw
Batch cooking: weigh all the raw ingredients and log the total. Then weigh the whole cooked pot, divide by the number of serves, and weigh each serve as you dish it up.
Someone else cooked: pick the cooked entry for that food and weigh what’s on your plate. It’s less exact, but far better than guessing.
Eating out: estimate, log something close, and move on. One imperfect meal doesn’t matter. Skipping the log does.
How Logpulse handles it
Every ingredient in a Logpulse meal plan is listed by raw or uncooked weight: dry rice and pasta, raw meat and fish, tinned food drained. Each weight is already scaled to your plan, and the shopping list adds up raw weights across the week, so what you buy, weigh and log all match.
If you say “chicken breast 200g” when logging, Logpulse uses the raw values. If you’ve weighed it cooked, it’s worth saying “cooked” so you remember which you meant.
This is general information drawn from published research, not personal medical or dietary advice. If you have a health condition, are pregnant, or have a history of disordered eating, speak to your GP or an Accredited Practising Dietitian first. For support with eating concerns, the Butterfly Foundation helpline is 1800 33 4673.
Sources
- Food Standards Australia New Zealand. AUSNUT 2011 to 13: Australian Food, Supplement and Nutrient Database. Raw and cooked food entries.
- Food Standards Australia New Zealand. Australian Food Composition Database, release 2.