Custom Nutritional info - Water Loss while cooking

[Leo1171]

Hola y'all,

  I do a lot of home cooking and was wondering what people use to come up with accurate nutrional information.  What I've been doing is adding up all my ingredients then dividing it our per portion.  The problem comes in when you take into account cooking times and water loss.  For example, figuring out the amount of water lost in a soup.  This is important because a soup prior to reduction has a lower caloric density, than one after it has been reduced (water adds weight, but not calories, take out the water = increase in caloric density).  Does anyone have any suggestions or ideas to figure out the amount of water lost through out the cooking process.  I've timed and wieghed water as it evaporates at different cooking methods (simmer vs boil, placing it in the oven at 300,350,400...) in order to get an idea of the rate of water loss.

Any fellow engineers out there can help, or am I over thinking this way too much?

Thanks,

Leo

[gerrymcd]

Other than measuring volumes before and after reduction its impossible to say how much water is lost (you would need to know the specific heat capacity of the soup, the starting volume, and the number of joules of heat added to calculate the loss of water....).  

If the though of it bothers you, perhaps just be conscious of eating a little less reduced soup....or add some water back? 

[steff]

You are overthinking it way too much.   Calorie counting isn't an exact science.   Calories are a mathmatical equation.  And just as no two snowflakes will be the same, no two people are the same,  preparations of a meal will not be exactly the same.  Just settle for the mathmatical quantification and be happy that you have consumed a highly nutritious meal that is low in calories. 

[Sandy1955]

I always cook from scratch. I just weigh all the ingredients and write down the calories, get a total and divide by number of portions.  When I make a big pot of soup, I wait 'til it's done, then measure how many one-cup ladels full we ate at the time and then measure the leftovers before I put them away. Then I can get the exact cals per cup. After that we're just rewarming, and it's still accurate.

[HelenaFitbit]

That is a very interesting question @Leo1171 ! I don't believe it's overthinking, but as long as your food has variety throughout the day, your nutritional micros and macros should be covered. 

I've used MyFitnessPal's Recipe builder; it automatically calculates the nutritional value depending on the cooking time. 

Another option would be to adapt your homemade recipes to any from RealSimple, AllRecipes or your favorite cooking blog, this way you'll get the most accurate nutritional information.