I think I might not be the only one who's unsure about this...and I've been lurking here much longer than I've been posting. I almost posted in another thread, but since there are some newer people around, maybe this will help them as well? Anyway...

Here is my problem, at least in regards to raw vs cooked meat. I'll use corned beef as an example:

The other night, we made corned beef. Raw, it weighed: 4 lbs 9.6oz (73.6 oz)

After we cooked it, it weighed in at: 2 lbs 11oz. (43 oz)

On the package, it said that 4oz = 130 calories (so, 32.2 calories/oz)

So, raw, I would assume the calories to be (73.6/4)x130 = 2392 calories for the whole piece.

Where I'm getting confused: when it cooks down, the meat loses a considerable amount of weight. Taking it's original calories, and dividing by the new weight: 2392/43 = 55.6 calories/oz...which is considerably more than 32.2 cal/oz.

Am I doing this correctly? I've had one website (can't remember which) tell me 70 cal/oz, and all of the others gave me that original packaging label answer of 4 oz = 130 calories. But 4 oz raw and 4 oz cooked are two different things...

...at least I'll come out of this journey with a sharpened ability to do mental math. *laughs*

I had this same dilema today. I will be interested to hear what people say.

I measure everything raw and by the gram. I don't know if that's *right* or not, but I feel it is likely to be the most accurate, since different cooking methods could account for differences in moisture loss.

If your packaging says 4 oz, that's 4 oz raw, not cooked.

Hmm...math was never my strong suit.

I think, though, that by dividing the raw caloric content by the cooked weight is giving you a skewed value. The weight that was lost was a combination of water weight and fat weight; loss of fat means a leaner piece of beef, so dividing the full-fat calories by the cooked/reduced-fat weight is artificially raising them.

Again, I think this is where it gets sticky...but my logic may be haywire.

In cases like that in which it's really tough to ascertain what the cooked calorie content is, I figure it's safe to round up a bit. For example, if you suspect that the 32.2 calories per ounce is too low and that the 55.6 is too high, just calling it 40-42 calories should give you some leeway.

Yep. Meat calories of meat you are going to cook is always pre-cooked/raw.

Think of that tag line at the bottom of a fast food restaurant commercial that says "weight before cooking". Basically you'll need to learn that one big cuts, take the full weight pre-cooked and divide it by the weight per serving. So you have a 16 ounce piece of meat. One serving is 4 ounces. Therefore you have 4 servings in that one piece of meat. Cook it and divide the mass in four servings. Basically weigh the cooked meat and divide it by 4. That's your serving regardless of the post-cooking weight. Understand?

I think if you take a look at my math, you'll see that I understand the basics. My question is how to calculate the calories per ounce of cooked meat, knowing that the package reads the raw amount. So, if I wanted to have 3 ounces instead of four, or if Eliot wanted six or seven ounces, we could accurately calculate that. Maybe I'm misreading but it seems that you're telling me what I already demonstrated.

Thanks for the input, Nola...we do round in some situations, always up. The problem in this particular case is that the only outside source I've read is 70 cal/oz, which is higher than both the raw number and my fanagled cooked number. Yikes.

Hi,

I would use the ratio between raw/cooked weight and apply it to calories.

So if 0.6 of an ounce of cooked meat reprepsents 1 ounce of raw (according to your calculations ..), meaning that 1 counce of cooked used to be 1.7 (1/0.6 rounded) ounces of raw... then number of calories in 1 ounce of cooked should be 1.7 x number of calories in raw = 1.7 x 32.3 = ~ 54 calories per ounce...

Hope that helps ?

Interesting, Naama, and thank you. It had occurred to me to try it that way, but I hadn't run the numbers.Looks like all of the methods so far are coming in right about the same (in the 50-55 cal/oz range)...hmm.

Thanks for the input, everyone!

I was answering the basic question with whole numbers as opposed to trying to follow your math as it was too confusing for me. The fact is that the calories for meat are always based on raw ounces. You would have to cut the meat before cooking to serving size and then cook it and eat whatever is there as one serving if you want an accurate calorie count. You cannot base your calories on cooked weight if you ate four ounces of cooked meat, you would be consuming more calories than you intended. That amount will always vary based on cooking method.