Carb Counting Before or After Cooking

[mariamack1]

I have a bag of McCain Potato Wedges. It states "100g frozen 20g carbs", "100g oven baked 26g carbs" and "100g grilled 24g carbs". My question is this: I understand the 100g frozen, but are the other two 100g BEFORE cooking or AFTER cooking? I always assumed this was the after cooking figure, but now not so sure as I count carbs specifically for my son, but it seems to be having different effects on his bg. Any advice please xx

 

[Pumper_Sue]

After cooking 🙂

 

[trophywench]

Maria when stuff goes brown when you cook it - what IS it?

Caramelisation, that's what. ie any sugars in the food (natural ones or sugar itself) turns into toffee on the surfaces !

Hence, a roast spud has more carbs than a similar sized boiled spud ...... and fried onions!!! EEEEK.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

I would imagine most of the difference is water loss during cooking (less water lost during grilling). Effectively after you have oven baked or grilled it quite a bit of the water that was making up the weight in the frozen item will have evaporated away - it's one of the reasons jacket spuds are so carb heavy. Some of the water goes and the carbs that were originally in the potato end up more 'concentrated' so a spud of a guesstimated similar size will have more carbs as a jacket than say, boiled.

If you are weighing onto the plate then use the after cooking figure, otherwise just cook a known total amount by 'frozen' from the packet and then divvy up by eye (total in the tray was xx grams of carbs and he's having a quarter of that)

 

[Pumper_Sue]

Maria when stuff goes brown when you cook it - what IS it?

Half cooked charcoal? 😉

 

[DeusXM]

Caramelisation, that's what. ie any sugars in the food (natural ones or sugar itself) turns into toffee on the surfaces !

Hence, a roast spud has more carbs than a similar sized boiled spud ...... and fried onions!!! EEEEK.

I'm not sure that's right.

I'm sure the process of cooking doesn't add more carbs to food that weren't already there - even if cooking caramelises the carbs in the food, it can only do this to the carbs that are already there so the overall carb count should remain the same, although obviously the GI will change substantially. I suspect it's as Mike suggests (water altering the net weight and therefore the percentage of the food that is carbs).

 

[heasandford]

I have a bag of McCain Potato Wedges. It states "100g frozen 20g carbs", "100g oven baked 26g carbs" and "100g grilled 24g carbs". My question is this: I understand the 100g frozen, but are the other two 100g BEFORE cooking or AFTER cooking? I always assumed this was the after cooking figure, but now not so sure as I count carbs specifically for my son, but it seems to be having different effects on his bg. Any advice please xx

Both Mike and Deus are correct.

Current legislation states that nutritional information must be provided per 100g/100ml AND this may also be expressed additionally per quantified serving/per portion.

Therefore the 'per frozen' figure is BEFORE cooking, allowing you to weigh out beforehand the portion to serve.
The 'oven baked' and 'grilled' figures would allow you to weigh the portion AFTER cooking (which some people do)

The Front of Pack information (only sugar, not carbohydrate) is always per portion as eaten, therefore after cooking