Calories in cooked versus uncooked ground beef!

The infamous DanO burger!

Whenever I eat anything, these days, I try and get some idea of the number of calories I'm putting in my mouth! For many foods, that's easy to do as you can read the number right off the package. However, some other foods are not so easy to figure out! Hamburger patties and spaghetti come to mind. Well, here's a tip. When looking at the published calories, nutritionists are most often referring to either the uncooked or dry weight of the product. That said, there can be other mitigating factors to consider. In the case of hamburger patties, there is also the fat to lean ratio to consider. Read on...  
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So, which is healthier for us humans to consume? A hamburger made from 75% lean ground beef or one made from 95% extra-lean ground beef?

Here are the numbers. Let’s start with two uncooked hamburger patties, each weighing 4 ounces (a quarter pound or 113 grams). The uncooked 75% lean patty has about 330 calories, (28 grams of fat and 18 grams of protein). The uncooked 95% lean patty has only about 155 calories, (6 grams of fat and 24 grams of protein). As you can see, the leaner beef has more protein, and therefore far fewer calories than an equal weight of the less lean beef. (The leaner patty is also higher in water and a little lower in cholesterol).

Cooking results in a loss of weight (and nutrients) in both patties, as the drippings fall away. The 75 percent lean patty, which drops from 4 ounces to about 2.5 ounces after cooking, will now contain 195 calories, 13 grams of fat and 18 grams of protein. After cooking, the 95 percent lean patty, which drops to about 3 ounces in weight, has about 140 calories, 5 grams of fat and 22 grams of protein.

The above information was excerpted from an article by Edward R. Blonz, Ph.D. Written in August of 2013!