Question about the reported calories on this site...

Sometimes I'll look something up, say mushrooms, and for raw mushrooms a 1/2 cup is 8 calories. For a half cup of cooked, boiled, drained mushrooms it's 22 calories.

Why? Are they assuming you're cooking with something that adds cals like oil or is there a chemical reaction that magically makes them more caloric?

I'm just wondering cause although 8 and 22 might not be a huge difference, it's a lot different for eggs and such. Thanks in advance!

Because when you cook the mushrooms they shrink meaning more will fit into a half a cup.

Raw mushrooms take up more space than cooked mushrooms...so the measured volume is different while the calorie count stays the same.

An example: lets say you have 3 mushrooms. If you measure them raw they might be 1 cup, so they are 16 calories according to cc. Now you cook the 3 mushrooms. They lose water and volume, but keep the same calorie count. Your 1 cup of raw mushrooms is now less than 1/2 cup cooked--still 16 calories.

make sense?

It's the stupid 'cup' unit of measurement.  If you check the results by the ounce there wouldn't be much difference.

Think about it...mushrooms are very light, firm and irregular shaped.  So a cup of mushrooms weighs zip.  When you've cooked the mushrooms (who boils them? LOL!) they lose some moisture, shrink and the texture softens. You can pack lots of cooked mushrooms into a cup.  So what they're saying is that 3 cups of raw (light, knobbly) mushrooms cooks down to half a cup of cooked (shrunk, floppy) mushrooms.

Spinach is a classic.... If you buy a 500g bag of leaf spinach it's a pretty big thing volume-wise.... cups and cups and cups.   Steam that spinach and you end up with about half a cup. 

Some foods e.g. 'scrambled' eggs... CC assumes that they've been cooked as they might at a hotel breakfast with a little butter and milk.  If you don't add either then just enter the raw eggs into your food log.

oh you three are so smart! haha it makes total sense, I just never did it that way. I would always measure before cooking, combine all ingredients while cooking and eat. So I would look at the calories and say "hm, well they are raw now but they will be cooked...." I never saw it as taking measurements at different times.

What about eggs though? 1 large egg is still one large egg...isn't it?

Where do eggs come up different?  1 large egg = 70 cals.  Fried it's going to be more, but poached or boiled and it should be exactly the same.

Vegetables generally get softer when they're cooked, so more will fit into the same space if you measure the portion after it's cooked than if you do it before (especially for something like mushrooms or onions that lose a lot of liquid when you cook them...) It's not a magic formula, it's simple physics.

The eggs will remain a mystery...

I am curious about this. I assumed the fried egg meant added butter - but I didn't originally, and I was adding butter as well! Then, to make myself feel better about it, I decided that must be the difference in "fried" and took the butter out. Is this true?

I really only eat eggs over easy and I don't know what to cook them in other than a tiny amount of butter. =/ (They're hard enough to flip even with the butter without cracking the yolk!!!)

Either enter your over easy eggs as 1 x raw egg and 1 teaspoon butter (or however much you use) OR as 1 x fried egg.  And to save yourself the butter calories invest in a nice new Teflon non-stick pan and some olive oil spray.  Works like a charm.

Thanks gi-jane!

It's kind of silly, but I never throught of using a spray on a pan... To me it always seems reserved for bundt cakes and cookies and other delicious baked goods I'm avoiding making in my lovely new oven... *sigh*

But I shall definitely give it a try!