Cooked versus raw calories

Hi vklugman,

Good question. You are talking about yield. If you are making a cooked diet then please use the cooked food items. Raw foods usually have the "raw" keyword in the name. The nutrient values for the cooked items are derived from the actual cooked foods, so even if you start out with a piece of meat that is 100g and after cooking it is 85g, then you want to measure the meat at 85g in PDD. So a good kitchen scale will help. Also, the most important metric here is water because when cooking, water is evaporated, which changes the nutrient density for all nutrients. The liquid fat residue from the cooking process is not measured so you can drain.

Hope this helps.

Rene

What if I want to keep the juice after cooking for additional calories and moisture? Is this even advisable? Any benefits to doing so?

If the juice is mostly fat then a little bit will help for palatability.

Rene

The juice doesn't look like mostly fat. There is some fat but there is also just lots of water. When I add in my rice, all the juices get absorbed so any spices that I've added don't get lost if I drain the juice. Any thoughts around this practice and if there is anything I need to account for if doing this?