Thread: Nutrition Content of Ground Beef

Over the past month or so, I've not had nearly as much red meat as chicken and other sources of protein which are easier to count and being leaner, also easier to fit into a deficit with decent portions.

Reducing red meat consumption is a positive change for me but I'm not intending to give it up completely. It's still important that I count the calories accurately.

Quick/simple question: do the calories on the label refer to the cooked or raw meat? When you brown ground beef, a lot of liquid runs out to be drained. Most likely this contains plenty of fat, as well; so if the label refers to the raw meat, how can you accurately count calories for browned ground beef?

Originally Posted by EliKoehn

Over the past month or so, I've not had nearly as much red meat as chicken and other sources of protein which are easier to count and being leaner, also easier to fit into a deficit with decent portions.

Reducing red meat consumption is a positive change for me but I'm not intending to give it up completely. It's still important that I count the calories accurately.

Quick/simple question: do the calories on the label refer to the cooked or raw meat? When you brown ground beef, a lot of liquid runs out to be drained. Most likely this contains plenty of fat, as well; so if the label refers to the raw meat, how can you accurately count calories for browned ground beef?

Package is raw weight unless otherwise specified. However, if it's a raw meat and it says the calories/nutrition is for cooked weight, it's probably not always accurate anything.

You can never be 100% sure with cooked foods that lose water/fat etc.

Best guess would be to assume perhaps a 10% reduction in fat content if the drained liquid solidifies at room temperature.

@ Adam, 10% seems a bit light but then ground beef is quite fatty, unfortunately. It's amazing how you think you browned it almost dry, and then your leftovers are visibly marbled.

Originally Posted by paulinkansas

You weigh the fat that is removed for a given portion of ground beef. 9 calories for each gram of fat. You'll need something like a digital reloading scale. Mine measures up to 3 ounces and goes down to 1/100 of a gram. I would pan fry 4 ounces of burger (1 serving), collect the run off, and put it in the fridge. The fat will congeal at the top and separate from the water. You can weigh the fat. When my wife make a big pot of chili in the winter, she boils 5 pounds of burger then puts in in the cold garage. The next morning there is an inch or two of fat on top of the water.

Why am I telling you this??? I have the equipment to do this test myself. I cooked a dozen chicken legs yesterday, and have enough leftovers to last me all week. So this weekend I might do this experiment. I'll probably do it with 80/20 or 85/15.

Yeah, I would actually appreciate that quite a bit if you could get some meaningful, consistent results from that, thanks!