Nutrition BuddyThe description is part of the measurement
A nutrition record describes a particular form of a food. “Raw”, “boiled”, “drained” and “flesh only” are useful instructions for matching what you weigh to the record.
Cooking can change a food’s water content and weight. Added ingredients, absorbed oil or discarded liquid can also change what ends up in the dish. A raw entry and a cooked entry are not interchangeable gram for gram.
Choose a consistent method
If you weigh an ingredient before cooking, choose a raw entry for that ingredient. If you weigh the finished food, choose a record for the matching cooked preparation. Check the source description when several records look similar.
- Read the full food name and preparation description.
- Choose the record that matches when and how you weighed it.
- Record added ingredients separately, or include them in a saved meal.
- Do not use a fixed raw-to-cooked multiplier for every food.
Divide a homemade dish by its finished weight
For a dish that retains all its ingredients, total the recorded ingredients, weigh the finished dish without its container, and divide the total in proportion to the amount served.
Illustrative example: a finished dish weighs 800g and its ingredients total 1,200 kcal. A 200g portion is one quarter of the dish, so its estimated energy is 300 kcal. This assumes the ingredients are distributed evenly. Discarded fat, stock or other ingredients can make that estimate less accurate.
What the public food pages cover
Our initial public collection contains raw fruit and vegetable records from CoFID. “Raw” describes the data; it is not a suggestion that every listed ingredient should be eaten uncooked. Use an appropriate cooked record when that matches your food.