How to correctly calculate the calorie content of the dish by the ingredients? Calorie calculator for ready meals

Women who use a cookbook do not need to consider the calorie content of the dish, because it is prescribed in recipes. But what if you cook without such an allowance, or you do not have the opportunity to look into it? In this case, you need to know how to correctly calculate the calorie content of the dish. Today we offer to learn this skill. So, what should you have in the kitchen to use the calorie calculator?

Preparation

Many women mistakenly assume that you can do only with a pen, a blank sheet and a calculator. However, we can not do without these helpers, we need good kitchen scales, they will help to calculate the exact amount of ingredients. It is necessary that the model be equipped with the function of discarding containers (dishes) and produce the result to within a gram, because we lose weight and maintain weight is important for each calorie. If you cook dishes consisting of several products, for example, soup, then without scales it will not be possible to find out the exact figures.

It is necessary to create a diary where you will make a calculation of the calories of ready meals. This notebook will help you with further preparation, because a constant return to debilitating math and the same numbers can discourage all the desire to engage in cooking a balanced food.

It is desirable to prepare individual dishes that you do most often, use one dish, verify the amount of water. Soon you will have an excellent eye development, and already at the stage of preparation of components, the nutrition of the prepared dish will be clear.

Products change volume, but not caloric content

When cooking, all products vary in volume. For example, a piece of meat and vegetables become less when boiling, and grains and pasta, on the contrary, increase. But one should not assume from this that the caloric content increases with increasing volume and decreases with boiling. Ready meals, changed in volume, remain with the same energy value.

Vegetables and meat lose moisture during cooking, so they become smaller in size, the grouts absorb water and because of this increase. Here's an example: you decided to boil the poultry breast and took it at 200 grams, and calorie 220. As a result, in the finished form the breast will weigh 150 grams, the calories in it will remain as before 220. And the amount of water will not affect its nutritional value. It also happens with cereals. Let's say that one hundred gram of cereal is boiled with a caloric content of 329 kilocalories in water quantity of 0.2 liters. The porridge will be increased in volume, but will not add caloric content. If you took water 0.3 liters, the croup will increase even more, but again will not add calories.

Example of calorie counting

How to calculate the caloric content of a ready-made dish, if you made boiled buckwheat and chicken? Let's say you cooked one hundred grams of cereals, as we wrote above, and decided to eat a third of the cooked. It's quite simple, divide the calories (329) into portions (3), you will get 109,666 .... In this case, we will round up, and we will get 110 kilocalories. With chicken things are like this. Let's say a carcass weighs 1.0 kg, and its caloric value is 1900 kcal. You took it and boiled it, the weight of the finished chicken was 700 grams, but based on calories per kilogram of raw product, in 0.7 kg of boiled is still 1900, and for one hundred grams it is 272. That is, one hundred grams of ready meat will be more caloric than As much as raw. But here you can remove the skin and fat, so you get only 170 kilocalories per hundred grams of boiled meat. This is the simplest example of how to calculate the caloric content of a ready-made dish. Let's move on to more complex ones.

Cooking cutlets

If you cook not only for yourself, but for the whole family, calculating calories will be a little more difficult. Let's say how to calculate the calories of cutlets? This dish is undoubtedly loved by all household members, and it is often prepared by all the housewives. That's why we decided to give an example of calculation on it. But notice, we wrote your recipe, with your own number of ingredients. Calorie calculator you can find on the Internet, there is written the number of calories of each raw product. Get used to it when making recipes. Calculation of calories of ready meals begins necessarily with the weighing of raw ingredients. For example, take this recipe:

• A pound of beef meat - calorie 935.0;
• 0.1 liters of milk - 64;
• Egg - 86.35;
• 0.1 kg of white bread - 242;
• 50 grams of onion - 20.5;
• For frying vegetable oil we measure 100 ml.

So, in raw form, we got only 925 grams of products, and their total calorific value was 2275.45. Now you can proceed to the stage of cooking cutlets. After you have fried them well, the weight has changed from 925 grams to 700, but the calorie content has remained the same - 2275.45! If you have ten cutlets, the energy value of each will be 228, provided that they are all the same. If the dimensions are different, then this way of calculating one will not work.

What to do?

If cutlets of different sizes, it is easier to calculate the energy value of each, based on the data per hundred grams. In order to calculate the calorie content of the dish, you will have to wait with the whole family for dinner, we need every cutlet!

If there are residual oil in the frying pan, then merge it into a measuring container and subtract the calorie content from the total, the example is given above. The calculation concerns absolutely all products. If the oil is not there, and the weight of all cutlets is 0.7 kg, then we will know the number of calories per hundred grams. To do this, we need to divide all the calories by the weight of cutlets in the finished form. Calculate the caloric value of the dish will help us a simple formula.

So, write down in your diary: the caloric content of one gram equals the division of the total caloric content of all raw ingredients by the weight of the ready-made dish. Then multiply the resulting figure by one hundred and get an energy value of 100 grams. Now you need to calculate the calorie content of the dish that you have prepared. Today we have cutlets.

Divide 2275.45 (calories) by 700 (the weight of the finished cutlets), it turns out 3.25 (the number of calories per gram). Now 3.25 times 100, we get 325 - this is the calorie content of a hundred grams of cooked cutlets. To find out the nutritional value of one piece, you need to weigh the cutlet. Number of grams multiply by 3.25.

As you saw, counting the calorie content of the dish by ingredients is not at all difficult. Now we will learn to calculate the nutritional value of the broth, because the soup is the first dish, and without it there will be no adequate nutrition.

How to calculate the calorie content of the broth?

Broth should be eaten at least once a day to be healthy, beautiful and cheerful. You can eat only broth, without additives, it is delicious, nutritious and very useful food. Calculating the calorie content of the dish is very simple, you just need to multiply the energy value of the product you chose to make the broth (per 100 grams) by 0.9. In this way you will get a hundred milliliters of broth nutrition. Such a calorie calculation of ready meals is suitable if you cook a broth in the ratio of meat and water 1/1. If there is more water, then the energy value of the broth will decrease, if less - it will rise.

To prepare a dietary broth, it is necessary to proceed as follows: after boiling, the meat is extracted from the pan, the water is poured into the sink. Fresh water is poured in, and the meat is cooked in it until ready. This is called the second broth. Thus, you get rid of the presence of excess fat in the dish, most of the calories from the meat goes into the water at the first stage of cooking, when the juice still flows from the pieces. Now let's figure out how to calculate the calorie content of the soup.

How many calories are in the borsch?

This dish is the favorite food of most people. Foreigners visit Russian restaurants to taste borsch. Each hostess has her own recipe and cooking technique. Borshch is famous not only for its taste qualities, but also for its benefits, because it is rich in vitamins and microelements, which are present in large quantities in the vegetables used: beets, carrots, cabbage, onions, garlic, tomatoes, fresh herbs. This is all a real storehouse of good! Calorie content of borscht depends on its density, someone loves thickening, and others - more liquid, from used meat and other products. That's why we will not place an example of a recipe for calculation, but we'll tell you how to calculate the calorie content of borsch, based on the formulas presented above for the content of the article.

Calculate calories

In order to find out the energy value of meat and vegetables, use the calorie calculator, it contains the number of calories per hundred grams of raw foods. As we have already explained, the volume decreases, but calories are not lost. The same happens when preparing soups. Water is a non-caloric product, but the broth will be saturated with them. The energy value will not increase or decrease, it will be distributed according to the total volume. So, to calculate the calorie content of the dish, you need to know the total energy value of all the components of the borsch. Their weight is only needed to calculate the number of calories, for example, white cabbage is contained in a hundred grams of 27 kilocalories, and you use 250 grams, then you will get them 67.5.

Using the usual technique, cook soup. But again, do not rush to taste it, you need to measure the volume of the resulting dish, we need it for calculation. So, the calorie content of all taken for the preparation of the ingredients, say, 2500 kilocalories, should be divided by volume (suppose, it turned out 4 liters - 4000 ml of borsch). We got the amount of 0,625 - this is the calorie content of one ml of soup. Now multiply by one hundred and get 62.2 - the caloric content of one hundred ml of ready borsch!

Applying a serving, do not forget to measure it, so you will know exactly how much you consume calories. In your diary calculating calories in cooked on a personal recipe dishes, write down the result. It will be useful to you with the next preparation, and you will not need to calculate the already known figures. But for this, always prepare from the same components, out of the same number.

Caloric content of side dishes

Calculate the calorie content of the dish, prepared for garnish, you can again, by the usual schemes. For example, you boiled one hundred grams of pasta and put half your own plate. Divide the calorific value by two and get the energy value of your portion. If the pasta was seasoned with butter, then find the caloric content contained in the used piece (one hundred grams written on the package). For example, you used 20 grams of oil, this is the indicator and find out. This is simply done by dividing the calories by one hundred grams, getting the energy value of one gram, multiplying it by 20, this will be the value of your piece.

Mashed potatoes are subjected to the same "torture". We weigh the raw potatoes to know exactly the energy value. We boil, weigh. Suppose we got a pound. You added one hundred milliliters of milk and 20 grams of butter. The total weight is now 620 grams. We look at the calorie table, calculate the nutritional value of the milk and oil used (you can look again at the packages). We add all the calories, the total number of them divided by the weight of the dish. We get as a result the energy value of one gram, multiply the total by one hundred, the result - the number of calories per hundred grams! Everything is very easy and simple. When used, such calculations will not cause inconvenience.

Porridge

Many people like porridge, start their working day with them. Porridge helps to recharge, feel satiety before lunch break. So, for an example of calculating calories, let's take a rice porridge. For cooking we take two hundred grams of rice and half a liter of milk. So, rice per hundred gram contains 344 units, so we have 688. Milk is skimmed, contains 30.8 units per hundred milliliters, we have five hundred, so we get 155 calories. Output the total, we get 842, and this will be the caloric value Ready meals. Using the usual formula, we calculate our portion: we divide calories by weight, get the value of one gram, multiply by a hundred-calorie a hundred grams of porridge. If you eat more or less, weigh your portion and multiply the energy value of one gram by the weight of the porridge.

Similarly, you can calculate the caloric value of dishes prepared with the use of oil. How to find out the number of units in the used piece, we wrote above. In the calculation of calorie ready meals also include dried fruits, berries and fruits. Do not forget to use the scales. Now let's talk about the often allowed errors in the calculations.

Two errors in calculating calories

The bases of calorifiers contain a huge number of recipes, and often women are guided by the calculation for them, the weight of ready meals. The thing is that "milk porridge" can be cooked on any amount of milk, and you definitely will not know the number of calories. It also remains a mystery how fatty the product was used. The same applies to "vegetable salad" - you do not know what kind of vegetables and how much they are used. That's why you should not rely on such bases, having a snack in a cafe or a restaurant. Moreover, you can not enter in your diary the received data. Enter only your own calculations when preparing.

The second and most common mistake is taking a sample from a ready-made dish. You weighed raw food before cooking, you learned their total energy value. Now it is important for you to know exactly the calorie content of the prepared dish. As we have already written, every gram is important. That's why have willpower and do not try an unweighted dish, even if you need to check for salt. If it is not enough, you can always salt up your portion, but if it's too much, you can hardly fix it.

Finally I want to say that the formulas are pretty quickly remembered, and you do not need to constantly use your diary. Counting calories is very convenient, because you control your diet completely, and this helps to lose weight and improve your health.