Cooking conversion factor of commonly consumed Sri Lankan food items

Abstract

Cooking conversion factor is a factor commonly used in recipe calculation, calculating nutrient content of cooked foods and cost of the cooked foods. Conversion factor is the proportion of weight between cooked edible portion and raw edible portion. It highly depends on cooking methods and type of the food, because there are some changes happened during cooking such as water absorption, water reduction and fat absorption. This study was done to find out the cooking conversion factor of commonly consumed Sri Lankan single food items. Food samples were bought from the local markets, and trimmed off inedible parts from each food samples. Only 100g edible portion was taken to processing, like frying, boiling, and tempering. Final weight was taken using digital scale and the conversion factor was calculated. Conversion factor of cereals and cereal products was between 2.2 to 3.5, for legumes 2 to 2.5, vegetables was 0.6 to 0.9 and animal foods was mostly below 0.6, because they mainly contain inedible parts highly than edible parts.