More calories in cooked meat or raw meat?

[HoneyBadger]

I use the Chronometer website to track my daily calories. However, I noticed that when I input an amount of raw meat, it gives me less calories than it does for the same amount of cooked meat. Why would this be? Why are there more calories in cooked meat according to the website, anyway?

[TylerDurden]

I think that the raw meat contains far more water per cubic cm  which does not count as calories.

[HoneyBadger]

I'm still confused as to why cooked meat would show up as having more calories though? I would think it would be the other way around with cooked meat having less calories since cooking is supposed to denature food and would therefore reduce the size and amount of calories in the meat???

[TylerDurden]

You are missing the point. Cooking greatly reduces the water-content, thus increasing the density of the food re nutrients per cubic cm so that it erroneously seems that cooked meats contain more calories than raw meats. Also, calories are not always useful, there are "denatured" calories in many processed foods  which provide zero nutrition. Cooking does, however, reduce the amounts of vitamins, minerals etc. in foods as a whole.

[ys]

Cooked meat is more concentrated due to water loss.
Beef jerky of the same weight will have even more calories.

[dariorpl]

All foods must be burnt down to an ash in order to calculate how many calories they contain, in fact that's what calories mean, it's how much heat energy can be derived from burning them down. What you are calculating there is the same weight amount of meat burnt down from raw or from cooked. As others said, cooking reduces water weight (and some fat also), so if you take say 900 grams (2lb) of raw meat, and you cook it, depending on how rare you cook it and the cooking method, you may end up with 800 or 700 grams of cooked meat. So then when you enter 900 grams of cooked meat for the comparison, that's really a larger amount of raw meat they started up with, so it may be the equivalent of starting with 1000 or 1100 grams of raw meat.

If you take rice or other dry foods that add in water weight as they are cooked (because they're boiled or steamed and absorb water), you'll see the opposite effect. There, 900 grams of raw rice may equal 3500 grams of cooked rice or what have you, so you will see the cooked rice having much less calories, just because there's less rice and more water in the same weight of cooked rice versus raw rice.

Those options where you can calculate the nutritional value of raw versus cooked meats are not meant for people who eat raw meats, they're meant for people who want to know how much calories are in a particular amount of meat that they know how much it weighs raw, or if they know how much it weighs cooked. Most people just know how much it weighs raw because when they buy it, it's weighted in order to know how much it sells for, but they don't weigh it again after cooking, so they don't know how much it weighs then. Some people do weigh after cooking and for those they can check how much calories there are in a set weight amount of cooked meat.

There is an argument made by some such as archeologist Richard Wrangham, that our bodies derive more nutrition from cooked than from raw foods. I think he is completely wrong and even dishonest. But he claims raw foods, even meat, provide so little nutrition, that an averaged sized person would need to be chewing food 16hs a day to achieve caloric sustenance. But in any case that has nothing to do with the calculations you're seeing, as those calculations only consider how many calories are in each food, not how many are absorbed and used by our bodies or in what way they are used.

[HoneyBadger]

Thanks for the replies guys!

Dariorpl-Your reply was especially helpful, thank you for going into detail, I think I understand now.

So my next question would be: What is the most accurate way to track calories for a raw food diet? Any links to calorie trackers that you all are using would be helpful too!

[TylerDurden]

Minor correction:- Wrangham suggested it would take from 5.7 to 6.2 hours a day for a human to get enough calories from chewing  raw meat. This is so obviously fraudulent it hurts.

[eveheart]

So my next question would be: What is the most accurate way to track calories for a raw food diet? Any links to calorie trackers that you all are using would be helpful too!

How much precision will you need? If you have been using food labels or calorie databases, you really aren't getting an exact number that pertains to the food that you are putting in your mouth. For example, the moisture content of the food on your plate may vary from the moisture content of the food that was sampled for the data. Another example would be that the fat content of a piece of muscle meat that you eat may vary from the sampled piece. Since you are already accepting a wide variance with cooked food, why wouldn't you accept the same variance with raw foods?

Another suggestion, one which makes more sense for each individual, is to use your appetite signals to figure out how much food to eat. Even if you are not using "instinctive" eating, you can figure out when you've eaten enough. (Even babies know how to stop when they are satisfied.) If years of calorie-counting has made you forget to check your appetite signals, it might be a good time to get in touch with those signals. I had to do that - move from calorie-counting to knowing when I've had enough. I didn't quit calorie-counting cold-turkey. Instead, I counted and paid attention to my internal signals. Once I realized that I felt satisfied at the same calorie-count day after day, I realized that I was using my internal signals and I stopped using a calorie app. 

Many approaches can be followed to learn your appetite signals if you find that you have forgotten them, instrinctotherapie, DBT, hari hachi bu, mindful eating, etc. I might point out that you are looking for the signal for "satisfied" and not the signal for "full." Full means you ate too much.

Good luck.

[dariorpl]

Thanks for the replies guys!

Dariorpl-Your reply was especially helpful, thank you for going into detail, I think I understand now.

So my next question would be: What is the most accurate way to track calories for a raw food diet? Any links to calorie trackers that you all are using would be helpful too!

You're welcome.

I don't track calories, I don't think it's important. Sometimes I will check how many calories I'm eating in an average day just to have some idea, for research more than anything else.

Any calorie tracker will work, but you may need to input the foods you're eating. You can find the calorie content of most conventionally produced food items in sites such as this: https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods

Like eveheart said, it won't be accurate, just like it's not accurate when someone does it for cooked foods. Not only because you don't exactly how many calories there are in a food, but because you don't know how many you're absorbing. Or if the concept of a calorie is even relevant when thinking of energy we get from food. It may be that it's not. But in any case, it'll give you an idea of how much you're eating compared to other people your size, if you want to do that for some reason.

Minor correction:- Wrangham suggested it would take from 5.7 to 6.2 hours a day for a human to get enough calories from chewing  raw meat. This is so obviously fraudulent it hurts.

Oh, that's from raw meat only? I heard/read him give the 16hs figure when talking about raw foods in general. He wasn't excluding meat though, I think. Just calculating for a mixed omnivorous diet I suppose. 6hs chewing raw meat is pretty insane anyway. I wonder if he's counting the time it takes to butcher animals using only your teeth and hands, with no tools whatsoever. Then I could maybe see it taking that long, depending on the type of animals you're eating. Or maybe he was also counting in the time it took to hunt?

[TylerDurden]

Oh, that's from raw meat only? I heard/read him give the 16hs figure when talking about raw foods in general. He wasn't excluding meat though, I think. Just calculating for a mixed omnivorous diet I suppose. 6hs chewing raw meat is pretty insane anyway. I wonder if he's counting the time it takes to butcher animals using only your teeth and hands, with no tools whatsoever. Then I could maybe see it taking that long, depending on the type of animals you're eating. Or maybe he was also counting in the time it took to hunt?

Where did you come across the 16 hour comment by Wrangham?  Presumably in his book, not online? As regards the duration, Wrangham stupidly made the guess by assuming that humans chew like chimpanzees at the same speed. Yet we bolt our raw meats down mostly, after just a one chew or two, much like carnivores do, so Wrangham's notion is laughable. Besides, our jaws are more adapted to meat-eating than those of chimpanzees.

[dariorpl]

Where did you come across the 16 hour comment by Wrangham?  Presumably in his book, not online?

I'm not sure. I may have been mistaken. But if I find it again, I'll let you know.

As regards the duration, Wrangham stupidly made the guess by assuming that humans chew like chimpanzees at the same speed. Yet we bolt our raw meats down mostly, after just a one chew or two, much like carnivores do, so Wrangham's notion is laughable. Besides, our jaws are more adapted to meat-eating than those of chimpanzees.

Hmm, I've seen chimps eat meat and they don't look that slow to me. And I often chew meat down to about the same consistency of ground meat, it still doesn't take me that long to do it. Though I do sometimes bolt it down like you say. It just depends on how much I feel like chewing. I'm under the impression that chewing it down makes for a better digestion as it will be liquified in the stomach, rather than having to wait until it goes through the intestines to be liquified, but I could be wrong.

Something else I've noticed, cooked meat, beef in particular, has a tendency to stick between my teeth, whereas raw beef rarely does that, and when it does it's usually some sort of gummy connective tissue/nerve and not the muscle parts. Also cooked meat seems like it doesn't dissolve normally through contact with saliva, so that when it does get stuck, it will stay there rotting away for long periods if not removed through intense brushing, using a toothpick or flossing. Raw meat however gets cleared away pretty easily on it's own or sometimes with little help. When I was a cooked meat eater I used to carry dental floss with me everywhere I went, and had to floss immediately after a meat meal, especially a beef meal. That happened even when eating blue rare thick steaks where only a tiny part on the outside was seared and the inside was raw. The outside layer browning was enough to make it get stuck. But the more cooked it was, the worse it was. Between the time spent flossing which took me like 5 minutes (or more like 25 minutes if using toothpicks, which I had to use multiple of because most of my teeth are very close together and regular tookpicks just aren't thin enough, so they'd keep breaking), and the time spent to cook meats, plus cleaning cooking instruments, plates, knives and forks, etc (all of which get intensely harder to clean when in contact with cooked versus raw meat), it took me a LOT more time to eat cooked rather than raw meats. Raw meat is easier (not harder) to chew, and it provides at least the same if not more energy in the form of calories or what have you. So the whole idea that eating raw meat took longer is ludicrous to me.