Do you weigh food cooked or raw for macros? Raw if you can — and always the matching entry

The rule in one line

The label on a package of chicken, and the "raw" entry in any database, describe the food before cooking. The "cooked" entry describes it after. Both are correct for their own weight. Weigh raw and log raw, or weigh cooked and log cooked, and the macros come out the same either way. Weigh cooked and log raw — which is what happens when someone portions Sunday's roasted chicken and taps the first entry in the app — and the protein is undercounted by roughly the weight the chicken lost in the oven.

Why the weights differ

Meat loses water. A chicken breast is mostly water, and roasting or grilling drives a good part of it off — the cooked piece is lighter than the raw one, commonly by something like a quarter, more if it is cooked hard, less if it is poached. The protein didn't leave; it is now a bigger share of a smaller weight, which is why 100 g of cooked chicken shows more protein than 100 g of raw in the same database.

Rice and grains gain water. Dry rice absorbs roughly two to three times its weight in water as it cooks, so a cup of dry rice becomes about three cups cooked. The carbohydrate didn't change; it is now a smaller share of a heavier weight, which is why 100 g of cooked rice shows far fewer carbs than 100 g of dry.

Fat added in the pan stays. Oil, butter and marinades are logged separately at the weight you added, regardless of raw or cooked. They are the one thing on the plate you should always weigh before it goes in.

The batch-cook shortcut

You don't need a yield table if you weigh the batch twice. Weigh the raw chicken (say 1,000 g, logged as raw against the package). Cook it. Weigh the whole cooked batch (say 740 g). Now every cooked gram is 1,000 ÷ 740 of a raw gram: divide the cooked batch into five 148 g portions and each one is 200 g raw. Log 200 g raw per container. The scale does the yield for you, for your chicken, at your oven's temperature, and it is exactly right for the batch in front of you instead of approximately right for an average one.

Rice works the same way in reverse: 300 g dry, cooked into 900 g, divided into five 180 g portions, each logged as 60 g dry. The only tool it needs is a scale that can tare a pot — 22 lb capacity for a rice cooker's inner pan with rice in it is why the Luminary is on this page.

A worked example

The figures are an illustration of the arithmetic, not a measured yield. Your batch's numbers come from your scale.

Where the yield numbers come from

If you want a published factor instead of your own, USDA FoodData Central has separate entries for the raw and cooked forms of most foods (for example, chicken breast raw versus roasted), and comparing the water content of the two entries is how a yield is derived. Every macro app's database, including the Nutritionix one behind the Etekcity and COSORI scales, ultimately draws on data like it. We link the database rather than print a table of factors, because the honest factor is the one you measure for your own batch; the shortcut above takes thirty seconds and is right every time.

The rest of the Sunday method — tare the container, weigh into it, five in a row — is on how to use a food scale for macros.

The scales this leads to