Cooking with Point Density in Mind

Given how much simpler life is using easy-to-estimate point densities, I've taken to thinking about cooking in terms of point densities as well. By making my meals come out with a PPV-density close to one, I'm able to portion my lunches simply by weighing. All year, I've worked w/ a 6-PPV lunch(1), for example, which is as simple as weighing my leftovers into 6-ounce portions and grabbing one for lunch. Easy, right?

At its simplest, aiming for a PPV-density of 1 means starting w/ foods with a density of 1 in the first place. For example, let's say I'm throwing together a pasta salad in the summer. I start adding foods with a PPV-density of 1: chicken breast, ham, pasta, etc. For these foods, no weighing is necessary: I'm aiming for the dish to have a density of one, and these ingredients have that density. Simple enough, right?

Now let's say I want to add some cheese at a PPV density of 3. To do so, I just hit tare on the scale and add as much cheese as I want, keeping track of the weight. Let's say I put in 2 ounces of cheese. In order to hit my target PPV-density of 1, I will have to offset the 2 ounces of cheese w/ 4 ounces of 0 PPV foods: tomatoes, celery, spinach, whatever.

I can use a similar method for adding Olive Oil. If I put in 2 Tbs. of olive oil, that's 6 points/1 ounce. To get back to my density of 1, I'll need to add another 5 ounces of PPV neutral foods. Hit tare and start adding. I might start with balsamic vinegar, which I want in my dressing anyway, then throw in some more greens, peppers, whatever's in the fridge.

The beauty of this as opposed to following is a recipe is that:

1. I can use whatever's in the fridge.
2. I don't get more than one bowl dirty — no extra implements to measure with.
3. I can still adjust flavors and balances as I go — if it needs more oil, I add it, I just have to offset it with 0-PPV foods at a 5:1 ratio.
4. When I'm done I have something I can keep in the fridge and eat as much as I want while knowing points — weighing the dish will give me the PPV value and I'm done.

I suppose if you wanted to, you could write the recipe for my summertime pasta salad as follows:

Tom's Pasta/Grain Salad Recipe: 1 PPV per Ounce
Lean protein	as much as you want, no need to measure.
Pasta (or rice or couscous or whatever grain you prefer)	as much as you want, no need to measure.
Cheese	Measure and offset with veggies at a 2:1 ratio
Oil	Measure and offeset with veggies/vinegar at a 5:1 ratio
Seasoning	Up to you: adjust the flavor profile any way you like.

If you prefer real recipes, it would be easy to make up variants of this by filling in the gaps(2), but to me the whole joy is in being able to improvise & then know the PPV of the food when I'm done w/ as little measurement as possible. Again, what I want in the end is the ability to weigh my plate and have the number of points I'm eating show up on the scale.

Other cooking can be done in terms of point density as well, though anything that gets cooked gets complicated, since cooking removes weight, which complicates matters.

For baking, for example, ultimately you're much better thinking in terms of items (slices, cookies, etc.) and estimating, since any calculations you do in terms of PPV-density just give you the density of the dough.(3)
Nonetheless, if you find this kind of thing fun and improvise as you bake, it's not a terrible idea to learn the PPV-densities of flour and sugar as well. (4)

Notes

1. I should mention that a 6 oz. lunch on its own is not filling enough: you have to supplement with 0PPV-foods. For me, I typically dress salad with just salt + vinegar, which means I can have as much salad as I want at 0PPV. I also pack fruit, carrot sticks, mini peppers, and whatever other veggies I have on hand. (back)

2. For those who prefer recipes, here are a couple that will end w/ a PPV-density of 1.

	Generic Template	Chipotle Couscous Salad	Pasta Salad w/ Italian Dressing
Lean protein	as much as you want, no need to measure.	3/4 c. chopped grilled chicken breast, generously salted, ideally flavored w/ an adobo rub or something like that; 1 can black beans	1/4 c. sliced ham + 1/4 c. sliced chicken breast + 1/4 c. kalamata olives
Pasta (or rice or couscous or whatever grain you prefer)	as much as you want, no need to measure.	2 cups couscous	2 cups butterfly noodles
Cheese	Measure and offset with veggies at a 2:1 ratio	1 oz. jack cheese + 2 oz. chopped tomatoes	1 oz. smoked mozzarella + 1 oz. baby spinach + 1 oz. chopped tomatoes
Oil	Measure and offeset with veggies/vinegar at a 5:1 ratio	1 Tbs. (1/2 oz) EVOO + 1 tsp. canned chipotle pepper + 2 tsp. balsamic vinegar (1/2 oz total) + 2 oz. mix of scallions+cilantro+spinach+bell pepper	1 Tbs. EVOO + 1 oz. balsamic vinegar + 1 oz. mix of celery + bell pepper + cucumber
Seasoning	Up to you: adjust the flavor profile any way you like.	Salt, cumin to taste	Fresh oregano, basil, parsley; salt & pepper to taste

(back)

3. Baked Good Densities are as follows:

Baked Good	Point Density (value of 1 oz)
Chocolate Chip Cookie (homemade)	3 (3.42)
Brownie (prepared)	3 (3.43)
Apple Pie (prepared)	2 (2.06)
Cheesecake (prepared)	2 (2.4)
Chocolate cake w/ frosting	3 (3.09)

In short: you could skip all the calculations as you bake, weigh your baked good, multiply by 3, and call it a day without being too far off. (back)

4. Ok, I'm crazy enough I learned the PPV-densities of basic baking ingredients anyway and sometimes try to use them to calculate points on the fly, but I'm highly unusual in that (1) I think this kind of thing is fun (2) I like to improvise as I bake. In case you're like me, here's the info I use:

Baking ingredient densities

Food	Point Density (value of 1 oz)
Butter	6
Sugar	3 (3.26)
Flour, white	3 (2.56)
Flour, whole wheat	2 (2.42)

If you can stomach multiplying by 2 ½, that's a better estimate for flour.
Some basic recipes come out like this then:

1. Bread = 5:3 (flour:water), or ~13 points / 8 oz. dough (using 2 ½) or an average point density of 1.6, before baking
2. Pie Crust = 3:2:1 (flour:butter:water), meaning (3*2.5+2*6+0)/6 or 20 points/6 oz. dough or a point density of ~3.
3. Shortbread cookie = 1:2:3 (butter:sugar:flour), meaning (1*6)+(2*3)+(3*2.5)=>20 points / 6 oz. dough or a point density of ~3.

As you can see, baking is probably the point where you're better off just looking up an equivalent food for an estimate, or doing the calculations precisely if you want to since you have the ingredient list and you're measuring anyway. (back)

Point Density

For me, doing weight watcher's well is pretty much impossible without doing a fair amount of tracking. Given that, any system that makes tracking easier — or that makes faking it easier when meticulous tracking is untenable — is a huge boon. Learning to weigh my food and think in terms of point densities has been just such a system.

A lot of people seem to think weighing your food is a lot of work, but it doesn't have to be. Putting a scale under your plate doesn't get any extra dishes dirty and it doesn't require any extra steps (you were already going to serve yourself, right?). As I'll explain below, for most foods that "count" towards your PPV target for the day, simply weighing the food in ounces would be a pretty good estimate for how many points you're eating. So if you're going to get lazy about tracking, you could do worse than to weigh all the non-veggies on your plate and keep track of that number.

I got to this lazy method of tracking after months of carefully tracking every item I ate. I was already enough of a geek chef to know that measuring weight is superior to measuring volume, so it didn't take me long to start weighing all of my food.

There's a thing that happens when you weigh ingredients as a cook where you realize that the density of nearly all food is 1 (that's because so much food is actually made of water). Well, it turns out that a similar rule applies to weighing food for Weight Watchers: the PPV-density of an enormous number of foods (specifically: foods with a heft to them similar to that of water) is also 1:

Food	Point Density (value of 1 oz)
Most Fruits & Vegetables	0
Potato, baked	1 (0.67)
Egg	1 (1.03)
Cooked pasta	1 (0.99)
Rice (brown or white)	1 (0.79,0.83)
Hamachi (raw yellowtail)	1 (0.97)
Chicken breast - meat only	1 (1.05)
Pork chop, cooked lean	1 (1.15)
Swordfish	1 (1.17)
Salmon	1 (1.45)
Cooked pasta	1 (0.99)
Bread	2 (1.68)
Chicken thigh - meat only	2 (1.65)
Pork Ribs, country style	2 (1.98)
Pork Sausage	2 (2.48)
Cheese	3 (3.04)
Bacon, cooked crisp	3 (3.41)
Butter	6 (5.83)

These are approximations, but not by all that much in many cases. For the amounts we eat, the difference between the estimates shown here and the actual number (in parentheses) is likely to amount to a single PPV, if it amounts to anything at all: at any rate, since the errors don't consistently work in any given direction, it's likely to be a wash.(1)

And the real advantage is that I've actually learned to think of food densities in a much simpler way, like this:

Fruits and vegetables	0
Cooked starches/grains & lean protein	1
Fatty meat	2
Cheese & Really fatty meat	3
Butter & oil(2)	6

If you eat mostly real, non-processed food(3), this cheat sheet + a scale will let you pretty much tally up your foods all simply by placing a scale under your plate and hitting tare each time you add something in a different point density category. Since much of what you eat belongs in the density 1 column anyway, you might not even have to hit tare between items: just weigh your lean proteins and grains and the number on the scale (in ounces) is a pretty good approximation of the number of points. Done.

This also helps with unfamiliar foods. Cooking polenta? You're probably safe approximating a density of 1. Tortilla? It's about as moist as bread, so let's assume a density of 2. Reheating left over mac&cheese from Panera? You could do worse than to assume a PPV-density of 2 (right between cheese & noodles) though it's likely not actually as bad as ½ cheese ½ noodles. (4)

I should point out that one consequence of this is that many of the differences between healthy and less healthy food start to evaporate: brown rice vs. regular rice, pasta vs. lean protein — on this chart, they don't seem to make any difference.

That said, I think a little time experimenting with tracking your food will tell you how a meal affects you in terms of satiety. All points are not equal, and we all know that if you eat foods that don't fill you up, you will find a way to eat later to make up for the difference, and often not a good way.
Also, lest you think that the points system is not likely to lead to healthy choices, it's worth remembering the enormous incentive WW provides to eat 0-points food. If you're trying to fill a plate, its clear that any way you slice it, tracking points is going to incentivize you to fill up with fruits & veggies.

Notes

1. Imagine, for example, a dinner plate with a 5 oz. serving of pork chops, a 6 oz. serving of brown rice, and some steamed vegetables with a tablespoon of butter (1/2 ounce). The quick estimate says this is a 14 point meal. If we go back and calculate it more carefully, we get 4.74 points for the brown rice, 5.75 points for the pork, and 2.92 for the butter, for a total of 13.415 points, which WW would round up to 14 anyway — same difference. The point is, even with some of our foods that seem like the "1" estimate is more inaccurate, it tends to not matter overall when you add up the overall points.

2. Note that most oils have a density higher than 6 since, unlike butter, they don't have any milk solids or proteins getting in the way of the fat. That said, oil is one of the few ingredients I actually typically measure by volume instead of by weight since I'm often adding it either to a pan or to a salad (which I don't weigh since it's all value 0). Given that, the fact that oil is significantly lighter than water means that the 6 approximation is much more accurate for a fluid ounce than for a regular old ounce.

3. As you can probably guess, many processed foods break both the rule of thumb that the actual density of foods is 1 and my WW corollary that the PPV-density of most foods is 1PPV/ounce. I eat few enough processed foods that I tend to learn the servings and weigh them that way -- when I eat cereal I weigh it in grams, for example. Nonetheless, here's a quick table of PPV estimates for common processed ingredients:

Food	Point Density (value of 1 oz)
Popcorn, light	3 (2.85)
Multigrain Cheerios	3 (2.71)
Corn Flakes	3 (2.79)
Frosted Flakes	3 (2.81)
Saltine Crackers	3 (3.08)
Animal crackers	3 (3.40)
Tortilla Chips	4 (3.62)
Cheetos Puffs	4 (4.11)
Potato Chips	4 (4.24)
Milano cookies	4 (4.39)
Edy's Slow Churned Caramel Ice Cream	1 (1.32)
Premium Ice Cream	2 (2.06)
Pound cake	3 (3.12)

It seems like we could simplify this to something like this:

Food	Point Density (value of 1 oz)
Dry snack foods	3
Dry greasy or sugary snack foods	4
Bready stuff	2
Cakey stuff	3

4. Actual PPV values: Polenta: 1 (0.66), Tortilla: 2 (2.22), Panera Mac & Cheese 1 (1.13). The Panera number is pretty low, so I'm a bit skeptical: it looks like what might be going on is that Panera Mac & Cheese is actually super-dense: I'll note that WW puts a cup at 10 points and 246 grams -- with a real density higher than water (1.08). I'll be honest and say I've always estimated prepared mac&cheese at 1.5 or 2 depending on how generous I'm being with myself on a given day. A quick check of the WW database shows that for Papa Gino's Mac & Cheese, 2 is the more accurate estimate (1.58 to be precise).