Building recipe

This topic contains 3 replies, has 5 voices, and was last updated by fasting_me 7 years, 3 months ago.

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mikeF00

1:02 pm
22 Aug 17
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Hi, I’m thinking of putting together some of my own low fat recipes. I was going to just calculate the calories from the constituent ingredients( as best I can) and Just add them up to give a total.
Is it as simple as this ?, or does the cooking process alter the calories consumed. Obviously I’m not deep frying anything.

bigbooty

1:23 pm
22 Aug 17
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The concept of a calorie is a little simplistic. Use it as an estimate. If you take a food substance and “burn” it and it raises the temperature of 1cc of water by one degree that is equivalent to one calorie. How does this relate to the foods that we eat? At best very poorly. Cooking usually liberates more calories that can be utilised by us. Use it as a +/-10% close enough type scenario.

Amazon

6:20 pm
22 Aug 17
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Hi Mike,

I do a lot of cooking and I calculate calorie content by weighing and measuring all the ingredients before they go into the pot which helps if I’m making several portions.
It doesn’t take long once you get used to doing it and is much safer than guessing.
Cooking will not increase the calories of anything unless you cook with oil/fat.

It may not be 100% accurate as far as science goes but it works for most of us.

Good luck.

LJoyce

8:28 am
23 Aug 17
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Mike, I agree with both comments. I use the weight and calorie count for raw ingredients when constructing dishes, but I know that the cooking process will change some things.

The calorie counts for raw ingredients are accurate, but depending on how you treat them you may not be able to absorb all of those calories. Essentially the longer something is cooked and the more it is processed or broken down, the more its calories are available to your body.

One of he big things that changes is the fibre content of food. For example if you cook a vegetable it roughly halves the fibre of the same raw veg. If you then puree that cooked veg you reduce the fibre even more. Less fibre means your body can absorb more of the calories.

Happy cooking.

fasting_me

4:57 pm
31 Aug 17
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Joyce, did you mean that if you JUICE the vegetable it loses more fiber? Merely pureeing does not eliminate the fiber, but it puts it into a better form for the intestines to use it. This also nourishes the gut bacteria better.

When I create/adapt a recipe for Fasting, I use the calories for the raw ingredients. Be sure the source of your nutritional information is accurate and use one source for as many as you can. I like the CalorieKing website which gives values for a huge range of ingredients. What’s listed on a container may be a bit of salesmanship. Also when making a new menu, I look beyond calories to fat, fiber, protein, carbs, and Calcium.

One of my pet peeves in a recipe is: ‘one zucchini’ or ‘medium cucumber’ What does that mean!?!? one zucchini could be 4″ long or could weigh 5 pounds! How can you cook like that? So I mass everything out to make sure there is consistency in my cooking.

All of my recipes and their food value are found on my website, Mike, if you want to look at a few new ones.

Bon appetit.