Raw weight or cooked weight: which one should you log?

Weigh the food raw if you can, and log it against a raw entry. If all you have is a cooked weight, log it against a cooked entry. The one thing you can’t do is cross them. Cooked rice logged as dry comes out at nearly three times the real calories, and cooked chicken logged as raw comes out more than a quarter short, because rice soaks up water in the pot and chicken loses it. Raw is the steadier choice since a raw entry doesn’t depend on how the food was cooked.

Why does the same food have two calorie numbers?

Because cooking mostly moves water. Rice, pasta, oats and lentils soak it up, so every cooked gram is mostly water and carries fewer calories. Oats show it most sharply: 379 calories per 100 g dry and 71 cooked with water, in USDA FoodData Central (FDC) entries 173904 and 173905. Chicken and beef go the other way. They lose water as they cook, so a cooked gram is more concentrated than a raw one. Some fat leaves meat with the water, and fried food takes fat in, but water is the main event.

The USDA entries show it in their own water figures. Dry white rice is about 12% water and cooked white rice about 68%. Raw chicken breast is about 74% water and roasted breast about 65%. The calories travel with the solids, so run the rice backwards: 100 g of dry rice at 365 calories lines up with about 280 g of cooked rice at 130 calories per 100 g. The pot didn’t make calories vanish. It spread the same starch over a heavier, wetter mass.

Every food figure here comes from FDC’s SR Legacy data type, the final release of USDA’s Standard Reference database, which USDA says will not be updated. Values are per 100 g, the entries are listed at the end, and ratios and yields are arithmetic on them, not USDA statements.

Which should you log when you have a choice?

Raw, for three reasons.

Cooked entries multiply with the method, and the raw one doesn’t care. For skinless, boneless chicken breast, USDA lists raw at 120 calories per 100 g and cooked at 151 stewed, 165 roasted or 187 fried (FDC 171077, 171478, 171477, 171078). The 36-calorie gap between stewed and fried is about a fifth of the roasted figure, and you haven’t made any other mistake yet.

Raw weight doesn’t depend on the pot. A cooked weight has your cooking in it: how long the rice simmered, how much water it took up, how well the pasta drained. Two pots of the same rice need not weigh the same, which is why a fixed cooked-to-raw ratio only ever approximates yours.

It matches the package. FDA’s rule for US labels is that nutrition information describes the food as packaged or purchased, with a few exceptions (21 CFR 101.9(b)(9)). So a box of dry pasta describes dry pasta, and a label may add an “as prepared” column (101.9(e)). FDA’s reference amounts for a serving show how far apart the two states are: plain pasta is 140 g prepared or 55 g dry, and plain grains such as rice and barley are 140 g prepared or 45 g dry (21 CFR 101.12(b)). Put USDA’s numbers through those amounts and 55 g of dry pasta comes to about 204 calories, while 140 g of cooked pasta comes to about 221. One serving, two very different weights.

What if you only have the cooked weight?

Then log the cooked grams against a cooked entry. That is the normal situation when somebody else cooked, when you’re eating from a batch, or when you didn’t plan ahead, and it works as long as the entry matches. Read the whole description rather than its first word: “boiled”, “roasted” and “meat only” all change the number.

If you cooked a batch yourself, weigh the pot instead of trusting a table:

1. Put the empty pot on the scale and zero it.
2. Add the raw ingredients, weighing each one, oil included.
3. Cook, then weigh everything in the pot.
4. Weigh your serving. Your calories are your serving’s weight divided by the pot’s weight, times the pot’s total calories.

Say 300 g of dry white rice goes in. At 365 calories per 100 g that is 1,095 calories. After cooking the pot holds 780 g and you eat 200 g of it: 200 ÷ 780 of 1,095 is about 281 calories. The cooked entry would have said 260 (200 g at 130 per 100 g), an 8% gap, because this pot held less water than USDA’s sample did, 2.6 times the dry weight against roughly 2.8. Logging the same 200 g against the raw entry would have said 730.

The two sensible routes land within about 8% of each other. The careless one is off by a factor of 2.6.

If you have to convert, the USDA entries imply roughly 2.8 g of cooked rice per gram of dry rice, 3.0 g of cooked lentils per gram of dry lentils, and about 1.4 g of raw chicken per gram of roasted breast. Treat those as estimates, since your pot or pan may behave differently, as the example above shows.

Recipe sites make this same choice behind the scenes and rarely say which way they went. Why two recipe sites give the same dish different calorie counts walks through it, and the same thinking applies when you are logging home-cooked meals that aren’t a single ingredient.

Does the same rule work for meat?

Same rule, opposite direction. Meat gets lighter and denser as it cooks. USDA lists 100 g of raw skinless chicken breast at 120 calories and 22.5 g of protein, and 100 g of roasted breast at 165 calories and 31 g of protein (FDC 171077, 171477). Calories and protein both rise by about 38%, which is what you would expect if water alone left: 100 g of roasted breast started as about 138 g of raw.

Run it forward. On USDA’s numbers a 200 g raw breast, which is 240 calories, ends up around 145 g on the plate. Weigh those 145 g and log them against the raw entry and you record 174 calories, more than a quarter short.

One detail catches people out, and it is what “raw” includes. The raw entry with skin is 172 calories per 100 g (FDC 171474), 43% more than the skinless 120. Take bones off before weighing, and choose the entry that matches the skin.

Where does it matter least?

In watery vegetables. Broccoli is 34 calories per 100 g raw and 35 boiled and drained (FDC 170379, 169967), so grams are grams in either state. The state matters most where the water content changes a lot: rice, pasta, oats, legumes and meat.

Why not just use cups?

Because a cup measures volume, and cooked food squashes. USDA’s portion data for cooked pasta lists a cup of spaghetti at 124 g not packed and 151 g packed (FDC 169737). That is 22% apart for the same noodles, about 43 calories. And “a cup of rice” is 185 g and roughly 675 calories dry (FDC 168877), or 158 g and roughly 205 calories cooked (FDC 168878). Same word, a factor of more than three.

The short version

• Weigh raw when you cook the portion yourself and can do it before heat.
• For a batch, weigh the pot and divide.
• If you only have a cooked weight, use a cooked entry and read its whole description.
• Never pair raw grams with a cooked entry, or the reverse.
• Take bones off before weighing, and match the entry to the skin.

None of this needs to be perfect. If you track food for a medical reason, or if weighing meals ever starts to feel stressful, talk it over with a registered dietitian or your doctor.

Where the numbers come from

Unless noted, figures are per 100 g from USDA FoodData Central, SR Legacy data type, checked October 1, 2026. Each entry opens in FoodData Central:

• White rice, long-grain, regular, enriched: raw, 168877 and cooked, 168878
• Pasta, enriched: dry, 169736 and cooked without added salt, 169737
• Oats, regular and quick: dry, 173904 and cooked with water, without salt, 173905
• Lentils: raw, 172420 and boiled without salt, 172421
• Chicken breast: raw, skinless and boneless, 171077, roasted, meat only, 171477, stewed, meat only, 171478, fried, meat only, 171078 and raw, meat and skin, 171474
• Ground beef, 85% lean: raw, 171796, pan-broiled patty, 174033 and pan-browned crumbles, 174034
• Broccoli: raw, 170379 and boiled and drained, 169967

Label rules come from the Code of Federal Regulations as published on eCFR: 21 CFR 101.9, paragraphs (b)(9) and (e), and 21 CFR 101.12, paragraph (b), table 2.