Raw vs Cooked

know that labeling means that the servings include the liquid the food is packed in!

Then there's the whole negative calorie thing Chris.....(I really don't know the answer to your question except for the obvious "oil" thang and other spirits added in)

I don't get it either.  On Calorieking.com           Potatoes, baked, flesh and skin--1 oz. = 26 calories           Potatoes, raw, flesh and skin--1 oz. = 22 calories Now how did baking a potato add 4 calories per ounce?  I can see how maybe cooking something MAY (but probably not) reduce calories, if like you say some of the fat cooks out, but INCREASING the calories with a dry cooking method like baking?!?!  Can anybody explain this to me?

 

The listing depends on the state at which you weigh the food. Getting ready to cook it and want to portion out 1 ounce? That will be x calories. Crap -- you forgot to portion your food beforehand and now have a cooked potato infront of you, and want to weigh it? 1 oz of it will have x+a few calories, because it actually took a wee bit more than an ounce to make that serving. Some water was released in the cooking process.

Baking it makes it weigh less, no??  So why would it have more calories?  I don't think we're comparing potato to potato here. 

Ok, I think I get it, Sonora.  You are saying that 1 oz of cooked potato actually contains "a bit more potato" (and therefore a couple more calories) than 1 oz of raw potato that contains more water.  That makes sense to me. 

Are you following this yet, Chris?

I gotta jump in - they sent me to school for this after all. The answer to your question is yes - there are different calories in a cooked food vs. a raw food Yes weight comes into play - there is actually a table out there that was developed (of all people) by the Army that describes foods in "raw product" vs. "edible portion".  This outlines how much "shrinkage" a food experiences when being cooked - particularly meats.  It's a huge book - but is the bible when you are in an industrial food service, with a tight budget and you have to account for all food, including losses. Then to make things more complicated, there are chemical reactions that take place in food that allow nutrients to be more bioavailable when they are cooked.  I'll use an obvious example - think broccoli, raw, on a salad bar.  It's hard to chew through that stuff - better if it's swimming in a little ranch dressing... If you took that same broccoli and steamed it slightly, it turns bright green and it's easier to chew - it also allows some of the vitamins to be available because they are no longer trapped in the midst of woody fiber.  Take that same broccoli and cook it until it's soft and you will release more vitamins, lose some of the water soluble vitamins in the water, make more of the soluble fibers available, and release more of the fat soluble vitamins. (I had a whole year of chemistry that was food lab - sounds riveting, huh?)   Another example, mushrooms have 5 calories per 1/2 cup when raw, and 25 when cooked.  Usually we use 25 cals per serving for all vegetables (1/2 cup cooked and 1 cup raw).   And if there was no difference, why would lettuce be a 'free' food? More often the vitamins become more available with cooking, but the calories are usually calculated using a maximum for that food when cooked. Did I help clear the mystery?

So are you saying that cooking vegetables/mushroons makes them easier for your body to absorb and therefore your body gets more calories from them cooked than it would from eating them raw?

Yes - and no. In the case of mushrooms, your body has a specific enzyme that breaks them down and that enzyme works better when the food is cooked. OK let me try to explain this without drawing a diagram... (I teach nutrition - and this topic always gets a corresponding diagram!) Food is made of of bunches of little molecules all bound together.  Cooking breaks some of the connections between these molecules and/or changes the structure of the molecules (this is why food gets softer when you cook it).  By rearranging the molecules and changing the shapes and even breaking them open there are different components of the food which are then available for digestion.  Complex carbohydrates, sugars, and fiber all all made up of the same molecules - the difference is how complex the arrangement of molecules are.  Some fibers just won't break down - those get called roughage or insoluble fiber - think husks.  Other fibers will break down a little and just get kind've sticky - with some of the molecules breaking off into digestible sugars; these are soluble fibers.  Other individual molecules or chains of molecules are cast out of the complex fiber matrix when you add heat, digestive chemicals, or if you crush them (chewing) - thereby making them available for absorption by your body. Generally speaking - fruits and vegetables have more calories when cooked.  Part of this is the loss of water, part of this is the change in the molecules that makes the calories more available for your body to absorb. For starchy vegetables, they have more available calories when cooked because the little starch molecules burst open and break into absorbable compounds (who eats raw potatoes...) For meats, they have less calories if you allow the fat and other juices to drip off For grains - well, let me know if you manage to eat those raw.  We almost always cook them. Raw almost always has less calories because the calories are bound up in a complex matrix of molecules and your body just doesn't bother to break it all down.  This is partly by design of our intestine.  A cow gets every calorie out of their hay because they chew the hell out of it, burp it up & chew it some more.  People just don't do that (I guess they could - but we would think they were gross) Now does it make sense - or clear as mud?