Choose the entry and measurement together. Use your own batch weights when converting portions, and do not assume every food has the same cooking yield.
Read the preparation words before entering grams
Look for dry, raw, boiled, drained, roasted or prepared in the food description. Those words establish what the nutrition values describe. A measured 150 grams of cooked rice belongs with a compatible cooked entry, rather than 150 grams of dry rice. If the description is ambiguous, check the package or another clearly described source before using it.
Food Standards Australia New Zealand explains that cooking can change weight through water and fat gains or losses. That means weight change is not a universal conversion rule. Rice absorbing water and meat losing cooking juices require different reasoning. Keep edible portions separate from bones, skins or liquid you discard.
Convert a cooked share using your own batch
Suppose you cook 200 grams of dry rice in water and the finished rice weighs 600 grams. You serve yourself 150 grams of that cooked batch. Your serving is one quarter of the finished rice, so it corresponds to one quarter of the original dry quantity: 50 grams. These are invented weights to demonstrate the method, not a standard rice yield.
If you use the dry label for the calculation, apply its values to 50 grams. Alternatively, use a suitable cooked entry for the measured 150 grams. Choose one approach. Recording both would count the same rice twice, and adding oil or sauce requires its own accounting.
Know when the conversion stops being useful
The batch-share approach assumes the portion represents the batch reasonably well. It does not reconstruct the nutrition of discarded fat or cooking liquid. A drained meat dish, breaded food or mixed casserole may need a more specific prepared-food source. Avoid correcting every cooked ingredient with the rice ratio from another meal.
For a repeat dish, record the measured starting and finished weights somewhere you can consult while calculating. If the next batch cooks longer and finishes lighter, update that calculation. Keeping yesterday’s cooked portion estimate while changing today’s cooking method can quietly introduce more error than rounding a final number.
Make the method visible in your logging routine
Before logging dinner, identify the source, food state, edible quantity and any separately added ingredients. Calculate the portion using those details, then enter the resulting meal nutrition through Nexal’s free manual meal, calorie and macro logging on Android. Batch arithmetic can happen outside the app; this method does not depend on an automatic recipe converter.
When copying a recent meal, check whether the measured state and portion still match. A useful final question is whether another person could tell what your quantity means from the source you used. Clear assumptions make later comparisons more useful than a long string of decimal places attached to an uncertain entry.
Use Nexal’s free Android meal tracker for the portion you actually ate.
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Frequently asked questions
Should I always weigh food raw?
No. Either state can work when the nutrition entry matches it. Raw and cooked quantities should not be exchanged without a suitable calculation.
Can I use one rice conversion for every batch?
Treat your measured batch ratio as specific to that batch. Water absorption and cooking conditions can change the finished weight.
Sources and editorial notes
Prepared by Nexal for general education. This is product-team content, not an independent review or a clinically reviewed programme. Exercise and nutrition examples are illustrative, not personalised recommendations.
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