Ok, so tomorrow for dinner I'm making pulled pork for sandwiches. I'm putting a 2 pound pork roast, boneless, in the slow cooker in the morning, seasoned with just a touch of BBQ sauce and some stock. On the package, 4 ounces of pork, raw and as-is, comes in at 130 calories. Every calorie count I'm finding online, even on caloricount.com, calls for "roasted" boneless pork at just over the amount of calories for raw.

This isn't a normal recipe, where I can just cut up what's left into whatever servings I want to make it equal the original number of servings. I won't know how much this cooks down and makes until it's time to eat, at the end of my day.

How do I figure how many calories to allow for dinner when I don't know servings, etc? I can't think today - I should totally know this already!

I think I answered my own question...sorta. Found a conversion chart sorta thing online that estimates that a boneless pork roast, cooked, will yield about 3.5 ounces of cooked meat per POUND of raw...so for the weight of the roast I've got, I can expect around 24 ounces of cooked meat.

That still leaves me with how to figure the calories. I know 4 ounces of raw meat will not be the same as 4 ounces cooked. I guess I can remove the meat from the slow cooker after it's shredded and sauced, then split it into six servings and figure my calories based on 6 servings total. Messy that way though...

There are a couple other ways you can do this too.

I've found that 4 ounces of raw meat, cooks down to about 3 ounces cooked (slightly more if the meat isn't very fatty so 3.5 ounces sounds about right.

So you could count 130 calories for 3 ounces of the cooked meat. To me, that sounds a bit low, but maybe I use fattier cuts of pork for my pulled pork (I generally count it as 60 to 80 calories per ounce of drained, meat).


I did find counts for "pulled pork" and for "roast pork" and also for specific cuts of meat (roasted shoulder roast, for example), just by googling them.

The calorie counts will be most accurate if you use the cooking method and the precise cut of meat.


Another way to count all meats is to estimate by fat content with a couple of tricks. Most meats will range from 50 calories to 150 calories per ounce. It's fairly easy to estimate the calories by the taste and feel of the meat in your mouth and/or a napkin or a piece of typing or writing paper.

If you take a strand of the meat and put it on a paper towel or better yet a sheet of typing paper, and it leaves a transparent or translucent stain rather than an opaque one, that means the meat is fairly fatty and you'd count the 100 to 150 calories.

Also, if the meat is "slippery" in your mouth that could mean it's higher in fat (but collagen also can have this "slippery" feeling, so it's not as accurate as the paper test).

If the meat is "dry" feeling in your mouth, it's probably closer to the lower end of the calorie count.

For most meats that aren't very dry or very fatty, 80 calories per ounce is a good rule of thumb, and it's what I use when in doubt.

I use an exchange plan to count calories, and most meats are considered one exchange = one ounce = approximately 80 calories. If the meat is rather fatty, then it's usually one proten and one fat exchange (estimated at about 125 calories per ounce).