Count macros raw or cooked? Chicken, rice and pasta, with the numbers

Why the same food has two sets of numbers

Cooking changes how much a portion weighs, not how much energy is in it. Rice and pasta absorb water when they are boiled, so a spoonful of cooked rice holds less rice than a spoonful of dry grains. Meat goes the other way: it loses water and a little fat as it roasts, so the cooked piece is lighter and denser. A food database stores both versions of the same food, and each version has its own estimated calories per 100 g.

Cooking yields describe changes in food weight due to moisture loss (e.g., evaporation or moisture drip), water absorption (e.g., boiling) or fat gains/losses during food preparation and cooking.

The same USDA document adds that nutrient values for cooked foods are often calculated from the uncooked food by applying a cooking yield. In other words, a cooked entry and a raw entry are linked by a weight change, and the database is already doing that conversion for you. Your job is only to feed it the weight that belongs to the entry you picked.

Raw and cooked, side by side in USDA data

This table puts the raw entry and the cooked entry of each food next to each other, per 100 g, straight from USDA FoodData Central (SR Legacy). Pick the row that matches how the food was on the scale, and use only that row.

Read across a pair and the pattern is plain. Cooked chicken has about 38% more calories per 100 g than raw chicken (165 against 120, estimated), because the water that left the meat is no longer diluting it. Cooked rice has about 36% of the calories of dry rice per 100 g (130 against 365), and cooked pasta about 43% (158 against 371), because water moved in.

How much the weight changes (our arithmetic)

USDA gives the two entries, not a yield for rice or pasta, so we worked the weight change out ourselves. If all of a food's calories stay in the pot or the pan, then 100 g of raw food becomes 100 times its raw calories divided by its cooked calories per 100 g, in grams of cooked food. We cross-checked each result with protein (chicken) or carbohydrate (rice and pasta), which also stay put. The two estimates land within about 7 g of each other.

These are weights implied by two database entries, not a yield we measured. Your own result depends on how long you cook, whether the rice is cooked to a firm or a soft bite, how well you drain pasta, and whether the chicken is roasted, pan-fried or poached. The USDA cooking-yield work covers meat and poultry only and records that yield varies with the cut, the fat content and the cooking method, so no single factor is right for everyone. If you want a number that fits your kitchen, weigh a food raw, cook it your usual way, weigh it cooked, and divide.

What a mismatch costs: one dinner, logged six ways

Here is the part that is rarely shown. We composed a dinner of 150 g raw chicken breast and 75 g dry white rice. By USDA values it is 180 calories and 33.8 g of protein for the chicken, and 274 calories and 5.3 g of protein for the rice, which is 454 calories and 39.1 g of protein in total (estimated). Cooked, that same chicken weighs about 109 g and the same rice about 211 g, using the weights from the previous table. Now we log it six ways.

The first two rows are the useful ones: weigh it raw or weigh it cooked, and the answer is the same dinner, 454 calories, give or take a gram of protein from rounding (estimated). The other four show what happens when the scale and the entry disagree. The rice is the worst offender by far. A cooked-rice weight logged as dry rice inflates the dinner by more than 490 calories (estimated), because the entry thinks every gram is dense dry grain. Chicken errors are smaller because the weight only changes by about a quarter, but they run in the direction people do not expect: weighing the cooked meat and choosing the raw entry makes you undercount.

Pasta behaves like rice. A dinner of 150 g raw chicken and 80 g dry pasta comes to about 477 calories and 44.2 g of protein (estimated). The pasta alone cooks to about 188 g. Log 188 g of cooked pasta against the dry entry and the pasta line reads 697 calories instead of 297, an overcount of 400 calories from one slip.

Which one should you pick for each food?

Both approaches are used, so here is how the pieces fit, as arithmetic and not as a rule. Whatever you choose, write it down and use it every time, because a consistent method is more useful than a perfect one.

• Rice, pasta, oats and other dry grains: weigh them dry. The pack lists the dry food, and the dry weight does not change with how you cook it. It is also the state where a small error in grams is a small error in calories.
• Chicken, fish and other meat: either works. Raw does not depend on how well you cooked it. Cooked is easier when you batch-cook a whole tray and eat from it. The cost is that cooked weight depends on how long the meat stayed in the oven.
• Batch cooking: weigh the raw total, cook, then divide the cooked batch. This avoids conversion entirely and is shown in the next section.
• Eating out or at someone's house: there is no raw weight. Use a cooked entry for the closest food and accept a wider margin. This is an estimate, and it is fine for it to be one.

Batch cooking without any conversion

The method that makes the raw-or-cooked question disappear is to weigh once at the start and divide at the end. We composed a batch of four equal dinners: 600 g raw chicken breast and 300 g dry rice. By the table above, the batch is 1,815 calories and 156.3 g of protein (estimated), which is 454 calories and 39.1 g per portion, the same dinner as before.

In practice you cook everything, weigh the cooked batch on the scale, and split it into four equal parts by weight. The cooked weight can be 20 g off from our estimate and it does not matter, because each portion is a quarter of the same known raw amount. This is the same idea as the five recipes in our macro-friendly meal prep guide, where the totals are summed from raw ingredients and then divided.

Converting a cooked weight back to a dry weight

If you only have a cooked weight, for example from a meal prepped by someone else, this table converts it to the raw amount and gives the calories that both versions share. It uses the implied weights above, so it is an estimate, and you should treat it that way.

For chicken, multiply the cooked weight by about 1.4 to get the raw weight. For rice, divide by about 2.8. For pasta, divide by about 2.35. The logic is simple: the calories are the same in both states, only the water differs. For the broader method of setting a daily target and summing a day, see our guide to calculating macros, and for how many grams of protein the numbers should add up to, our guide to protein per day.

A caution about weighing everything

Weighing food can help some people understand portions and feel counterproductive for others. If counting grams makes eating stressful, if you notice that you skip meals or avoid foods because you cannot weigh them, or if you have or have had an eating disorder, do not use this page to tighten your tracking. Talk to a doctor or a registered dietitian about a method that suits you. If you have a medical condition, are pregnant or breastfeeding, or are under 18, ask a professional for your numbers before you follow any table on this page. This is general information, not medical advice.

If you would rather not weigh at all

This part is written by the team behind MacroRecipe, so read it with that in mind. The raw-or-cooked question exists because you have to enter weights somewhere. A scale, USDA FoodData Central and a spreadsheet are enough, and our weekly grocery list guide shows how to turn a planned week into one list.

MacroRecipe takes a different route. It plans your week of menus around your macros and the goal you choose, from dishes you pick, with ingredient data from USDA and CIQUAL (ANSES), and sizes the portions toward your estimated calorie and protein targets. When you swap a dish, the portions and the grocery list follow. You cook from a menu instead of logging what you ate.

Who it isn't for: MacroRecipe runs on iPhone only, not on Android. It has no barcode scanner, no food database to search and no complete food diary, though a photo scan of a meal eaten elsewhere comes with the subscription. You can preview your first menu for free, after which it is a paid subscription. If you would rather log everything you eat, our MacroFactor alternatives guide covers trackers.

How we calculated

Every value is a USDA FoodData Central SR Legacy entry per 100 g, read on 2026-10-26 through the FoodData Central API, by the FDC ID shown in the first table. Calories are USDA's own energy values in kcal, not recomputed from macros. We did not weigh anything in a kitchen.

• Implied cooked weight. Cooked grams from 100 g raw = raw kcal per 100 g divided by cooked kcal per 100 g, times 100. Chicken 120 / 165 = 72.7 g, rice 365 / 130 = 280.8 g, pasta 371 / 158 = 234.8 g. Cross-checks: chicken 22.5 / 31.0 g protein = 72.5 g, rice 80.0 / 28.2 g carbohydrate = 283.7 g, pasta 74.7 / 30.9 g carbohydrate = 241.7 g.
• The dinner. 150 g raw chicken = 1.5 x 120 = 180 kcal; 75 g dry rice = 0.75 x 365 = 273.8 kcal. Cooked weights 109.1 g and 210.6 g come from the implied weights. Each row of the mismatch table is a weight multiplied by the value per 100 g of the entry named in the row.
• Pasta dinner. 150 g raw chicken plus 80 g dry pasta = 180 + 296.8 = 476.8 kcal; the pasta cooks to 80 x 2.348 = 187.8 g, and 187.8 g against the dry entry = 696.9 kcal.
• Rounding. Rows are rounded; a total can differ from the sum of its rows by a calorie or a tenth of a gram. Cooked-entry protein differs slightly from raw-entry protein because the implied weights are a calorie-based estimate.
• Not tested. Cooked weights are arithmetic from two database entries, not measured. Your pan, oven, pot and timing will give different yields.

Frequently asked questions