I promise that I don't make a habit of eating chicken skin, but every so often there's a recipe that sounds good and crispy skin is yummy and I'd like to be able to make an informed choice and see if I can have the skin once in a while.

 Here's my problem.  To track fat and calories, I use (among other sources) the USDA food database at www.nal.usda.gov.  I assume this is the industry standard, as I often see the exact same descriptions and information in other databases (sparkpeople, calorieking, etc.) 

I'm making a chicken recipe for tonight that calls for chicken with the skin and bone.  For a food description I chose "chicken, broilers or fryers, breast, meat and skin, raw."  For a unit of measure I chose ".5 breast, bone removed, yield from 1 lb ready to cook chicken."  (I'm a little confused about the interplay of "bone removed" and "ready to cook", but let's forge ahead.)  I was putting in chicken to marinate this morning and I weighed my raw, with skin and bone, 1/2 breast and it weighed 8 oz.  So, I decided that was the yield from 1/2 of "1 lb ready to cook chicken" and entered the appropriate amount.  The USDA data base says that that piece of chicken has 75 calories and 4g of fat.  I'm having trouble believing that a decent sized chicken breast, with skin, has only 75 calories and 4 g of fat.  So, what am I doing wrong?  How do I calculate the calories and fat in a piece of chicken breast with skin, when I have the weight with bone?

(Yes, I mostly use boneless, skinless chicken when I cook, but it's nice to have the info available for the occasional spree.)

The NAL is an excellent source, and one I use all the time.  I can understand why you're confused.  Deriving REAL information from raw ingredients is challenging, though for mixed dishes like stews and casseroles it's just about the only way to go.

FYI, the interplay between "bone removed" and "ready to cook" means the first only has the bone removed, while the second trims the meat of any visible fat or grizzle in addition to removing the bone.

Bottom line: I'd suggest you choose one of the "cooked" values.  They list a number of choices - fried, roasted, broiled, etc. - with or without the skin.

I hope that helps. Please let me know if you need anything else.

Pat Baird, MA, RD, registered dietitian

OK, so probably the NAL listing I want to use when I'm weighing a raw* chicken breast with skin and bone is " Chicken, broilers or fryers, breast, meat and skin, raw -- .5 breast bone removed - gram weight 145" and I should assume that that refers to meat and skin (no bone) weighing 145 grams or approximately 5.2 oz.  Here's my problem.  I have a chicken breast with the bone and no intention of removing the bone before cooking.  (Yes, I could remove it after cooking and stop and weigh it before I bring it to the table, but that's annoying, leads to cold chicken, is not conducive to a pleasant meal with my husband and results in my weighing the marinade or whatever other ingredients I've added to the chicken.)  Is there a standard formula for the yield of meat and skin, based on the weight with the bone?  Should I be paying attention to the place on the NAL nutrients page where it says "20% refuse (bone)" and assuming that the bone is 20% of the weight of the original chicken breast, allowing me to calculate the weight of the meat and skin and plug the right number into NAL?

(Also, if you look at the cooked options, you'll see it doesn't really solve the problem.  I still don't know how much my chicken weighs without the bone.)

 I don't know of a standard formula but you can check with the National Broiler Council since they represent the chicken industry.

Since you mentioned originally that you mostly use boneless chicken I would weigh out several cooked portions of that so it closely resembles what you generally eat.  Then when you remove the cooked meat from the bone, estimate the portion size and use that for your serving.  As I said before I never use the raw numbers unless it's for a stew or soup and then I generally allow about 20% variation.

Pat