Myth 3 of 3

Is 100 g of chicken always 100 g of chicken?

USDA's cooking yield table puts roasted chicken breast (that entry is meat with skin) at 72% of its raw weight on average, 61% to 82% across samples. For that entry, 100 g raw ends up as roughly 72 g cooked. The protein values above are for meat without skin, whose yield may differ a little.

Where it goes wrong

You weigh 150 g of cooked chicken and log it as raw chicken:

About 13 g of protein went missing from the log. That is almost half of a 30 g protein portion, gone from one plate. Both numbers are database averages, not a lab test of your chicken.

Pasta does it the other way. Log 100 g of cooked pasta as dry pasta and you write down 371 kcal for food that has 158. By USDA averages, that is 213 kcal too many.

AI assistants do it too

Ask an assistant about "150 g chicken" and it has to pick raw or cooked. Unless you ask, it may not say which one it picked. Close the gap with one line:

All weights I give are [raw / cooked]. Use matching food entries, say which entry you used for each food, and do not mix raw and cooked values.

What to do

• Weigh raw when you can. Raw values vary less than cooked ones, because cooking method and time change the yield.
• Batch cooking? Weigh the whole batch raw and again cooked. Divide, and you have your own yield.
• Always write raw or cooked next to the number, for the app and for the AI.