How much fat is really in the meat after you cook it

(Paul) #1

I like to track my macronutrients by checking the nutrition labels on the meats I eat but it becomes confusing when cooking. If I grill a steak or burger a lot of the fat drips off. If I bake chicken drumsticks in a pan, next morning the pan may have a quarter inch of congealed fat left. If I cook bacon and pour off the fat into an empty can and save it, Pretty soon the can fills entirely up.

I have to reason that the nutrition label includes all that fat, because there is no way of knowing whether a person will consume every bit (by mixing stuff in the pan, say, and eating it all together).

But as in my example at the top, in a practical world, a LOT of that fat is left behind. Therefore, if my reasoning is correct, some of the macronutrient (I.e, fat) figures I plug into my diet spreadsheet probably way everstate the fat intake.

I could scrape out and carefully measure the leftover fat, apportioning it to number of items cooked, etc etc, but that is far too much effort on a daily basis.

Or maybe I’m wrong and the labels assume the meat is cooked and estimate the calories and and fat based on a typical real-world serving.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

#2

I think you’re right. You could just weight the pan before you start and again after that way you get all of it but I just count it all like I think we all do

(Laurie) #3

Depends how you’re tracking things, but. . . .

Unless I eat all the drippings from a cooked item, I look up the nutrients for the “cooked” item. For example, you can google cooked beef patty, cooked bacon strip, etc. It might be a bit of extra work at first, but soon you’ll memorize the figures for the things you eat most often.

(Dan Dan) #4

You can always ask google:

1 pound cooked steak 87g fat
1 pound cooked pork loin 64g fat
1 pound cooked bacon 187g fat

but it’s just a average aka educated guess you will never know for sure. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

(Mike W.) #5

It shouldn’t matter. Fat should be to satiety, not a goal.

(You've tried everything else; why not try bacon?) #6

If it’s not in the meat after cooking, I pour it from the pan onto the meat, or make gravy out of it. I don’t want to lose a drop! Of course, bacon fat is great for cooking other stuff in. Although I have been known to drink the bacon juice, on occasion. :bacon::bacon::bacon: