Raw versus cooked food calories
Match the database entry to the food you weighed: raw with raw, cooked with cooked. Equal weights before and after cooking need not contain equal amounts of food solids.
Water changes the denominator
When grain absorbs water, its cooked weight increases. A 100 g portion of cooked rice is not the same amount of grain as 100 g of dry rice. Meat may lose water during cooking. That can increase its calories per 100 g even when nothing energy-containing was added.
Water alone does not add calories. Oil, butter and sauces do. Drained fat or cooking liquid can remove some nutrients, so assuming the total stays exactly constant can also be wrong.
Read the whole food name
“Raw”, “cooked”, “boiled”, “fried”, “with skin” and “drained” describe different records. Check the cut, edible part and preparation as well as the name. A national food database describes sampled foods; its average is not a laboratory result for your plate.
When no entry matches
For a home recipe, record the ingredients in the state in which you weighed them, include added fat, then weigh the finished edible batch. If the ingredients total 1,200 kcal and the finished batch weighs 800 g, 200 g is one quarter of the batch: approximately 300 kcal. This fictional example assumes the counted ingredients remain in the batch.
Use the right record in Snapfork
The optional USDA food pack keeps the original English description, including preparation. Download it in the food picker, search locally, and check that description before choosing a portion. You can always enter your measured weight. Missing nutrient fields remain unknown and may require a better source or manual completion.
Source and limits
USDA Foundation Foods documentation explains sampled foods, nutrient variation and weight data. Recipe arithmetic here is a practical estimate, not a clinical diet prescription.
Prepared with AI for Snapfork. Responsible operator: Oleksandr Trifonov. Checked 2 October 2026; report corrections through app support.