Fat content in vegetables such as spinach and broccoli
 

I just added spinach and broccoli in my stats for today. One of them clamed to have 5 grams of fat and the other 4 grams. Why? If fat isn't added during cooking they should have 0 grams. That's what it says on the lable on frozen and canned spinach and broccoli. This seems to make my calculations for fat grams inaccurate, and also makes me suspect of other calculations being incorrect.

Take the time to create your own list.
 

Yep, I started taking each package and creating my own list, so I know it is accurate, it will be time consuming, but at least you know exactly what you are taking in each day.

Me too JN. I start off with fitday's raw veggie data & add ingredients then make up a custom food or else I go over to Calorie Count Recipe Analysis and plug in my recipe. I'm not sure how accurate they are since they have the macronutrients wrong for Splenda.
I only use the Fitday numbers when I eat out since I figure fitday is using the most common way that food is prepared. I wish they'd say how it was cooked in more of the food listings though.

According to [link removed], raw spinach is about 14% fat by caloric content. Broccoli is 9% fat.

Everything has at least a little fat/carb/protein in it; just because a food is low-*blank*, doesn't mean its *blank*-free. All real food (fruits, veggies, roots, legumes, meat, nuts, seeds, dairy) naturally has all three macronutrients in it.

-Nik

Nik, good point. But I thought we were talking about the difference Fitday lists between cooked vs raw for the same veggie. When I first started using Fitday I noticed that there was way too much of a difference to just be water loss. With things like spinach the change is understandable since raw vs cooked is enormous but with others it didn't make sense. Anyways, since I'm keeping close tabs on fat grams I started measuring my veggies raw & add the ingredients to get an accurate fat gram, it's different than Fitday's cooked numbers since I don't add fat or oil. I've just kept doing it that way unless I eat the veggies in restaurants.

I think the "cooked" category often assumes that some fat (and salt) is added during the cooking process (this is, if there isn't a separate "fat added"/"fat not added" selection).

I'm with you all. Start with the food "raw" then add whatever else you used in the cooking process, which for most of us in nothing when it comes to veggies.

Although vegs contain small amounts of fat, they actually help you burn the fat. There are chemicals called xenoestrogens, which make our bodies to store fat. All of cruciferous green smoke reviews vegitables like cabbage, broccoli, kale, brussels sprouts and cauliflower contain Indole-3-Carbinol that turns off xenoestrogens and thus help you not store the fat. So overall, any fat that you gain from vegetables is lost through neutralisation with I3C.

There are other sites you can double check the accuracy of the calories on and then make them a custom food. You might be able to use a food scale to weigh how many ounces of broccoli, etc. you're using too.

If you type it in the search box, it assumes some preparation with fat.

If you go to Browse, select Vegetables, and find it that way, you should see the option "prepared without fat." See if that takes the fat grams out of it for you.

If I buy anything canned, frozen, or packaged, I use the nutritional information they give you on the box, can, etc. After all, they produced it. When you think of it, fitday attempts to give you nutrition information for ANY spinach, which is kind of a wide range.

I agree that if you find it though search, you get more options (baked potato with skin, without skin, skin only, salt, no salt, etc.)

I also add the nutrition data from the box or package and add it as a new custom food. It seems to be the best choice for me.

I find creating my own custom foods great. I get most of the info off of the labels. I haven't noticed any vegetable options that are "prepared without fat". I'll have to check that out. I first noticed the jump in the fat numbers when I first started but have been using the raw, since I mostly steam my veggies.

Thanks for all the info peeps. I started Oct 14, 2011 and am happy with my results so far. down 4 lbs. :)