Question about FitDay daily food log
 

Hi everyone, this is a question that maybe North American's can answer for me regarding the Fitday daily food log, which I'm using to keep track of everything I eat and drink. I wanted to enter details of a skinless chicken breast, which raw weighs 5ozs. When I searched for it I found and entry for 'chicken breast skin not eaten' which was a perfect match. When it was entered into my food log I then had to enter the weight of the food (unit). This is where I got confused. The drop down list offered many choices, one of which was ozs, so I chose that one and put in the weight of 5 so that my 5oz chicken breast was then broken down to show cals, fat, protein, etc. However I also noticed in the drop down list a choice which was 'oz, boneless, raw, without skin (yield after cooking)'. Out of curiosity I also entered that, put in 5 for weight, and the cals, fat, protein, etc came out differently. I'm very confused as to which unit of weight I should use in this instance as I don't want to mess up my food count by using this tool incorrectly. I'm very curious as to what 'yeild after cooking' means. There's probably a very simple explanation which my tired brain can't grasp, so any advice would be appreciated.
Many thanks, Abigail.

Hi Abby, raw food and cooked food weigh differently. If your chicken breast weighed 5 oz. before cooking, the second way you did it was the correct one. It indicates that the breast weighed 5 oz. raw and the yield after cooking would be less, but FitDay has taken that into account when calculating the values.

Wow, Cassie, thanks for your quick reply! OK, just to clarify, if I want to enter into my food log something like a 5oz portion of fish, beef, chicken, etc, which I always weigh raw BEFORE I cook it, I should make sure that I choose the weight option that says 'oz, raw (yeild after cooking)'? I'm assuming that for raw food like this there will always be the yield after cooking option, but obviously I've not noticed it before. Which means that I've been incorrectly entering some of my food choices. Oh, well, at least I know now. Many thanks, Abigail.

Yes. Same thing as with a piece of fruit. If an apple weighs 7 oz., then "yield" here would mean the edible part, without the core, seeds, etc. However, there's a lot of variation there in terms of how close to the core you eat or cut, so I always weigh in the regular right-before-eating state, which is just the plain "ounce" entry.