As a nutritionist, I know how to read labels. At times, I feel like everyone knows how to do this. But that is not true. Not everyone spends time focusing on this aspect of life or knowledge. Let’s change this, one lesson at a time. You might know some of these ideas. But what if you learn something new?
Labels contain a lot of information, including the ingredients and the nutritional profile of the product.
The first lesson is that the nutritional profile on uncooked grains and legumes is mentioned for uncooked grains and legumes. If you buy a bag of rice, the number of calories on the label is for uncooked rice. That number changes when you cook the rice as it absorbs water and changes in volume. So while 100 g of uncooked rice is about 370 kcal, 100 g of cooked rice might be 130 kcal depending on the type of rice and the amount of water used for cooking.
When you prepare 50 g of uncooked rice, you have 185 kcal in the end product…if you only use water to prepare it. There is a bit of math involved in finding out how much the cooked rice weighs based on the previous numbers.
If 100 g cooked rice is 130 kcal, then 1 g of cooked rice is 1.3 kcal. If we cook 50 g of rice, that’s 185 kcal. So we need to find out the end weight of the cooked rice. And it’s 185 kcal divided by 1.3 kcal. That’s 142 g. You get 142 g cooked rice from 50 g uncooked rice, everything for 185 kcal.
These are estimates that you can use on actual products and in real circ*mstances if you want to know how many calories you’re consuming.
When cooking for more people, you might need to use a kitchen scale or a tablespoon to measure the end result you put on your plate.
