How can cooked meat have more calories than raw meat?...Fat drips away when you cook it. It doesn t make sense.?

It has more calories per ounce when it's cooked because meat shrinks. For example, one large apple weighs around 5 ounces and has 130 calories. If you were to dehydrate that apple it would weigh like, 1 ounce or less. But if you ate the same amount (by weight) you'd be taking in 5 ounces of dehydrated apple which would be the equivalent of 4-5 apples. Which would contain way more calories. In the same way, water, blood and a small amount of fat leave the meat during the cooking process and it becomes more calorie dense.

Does that make sense? I feel like it doesn't. Ha.

You're partially correct. Yes, much of the fat drips away, but also some of the fat spreads through the muscle fibers as it cooks - that's why cooked meat tends to have more calories than the same meat when it's raw.

Cooked meat doesn't have more calories than raw meat...it has more calories PER OUNCE because it's condensed. If you take a one pound steak and cook it on a grill it will have less calories, but it won't weigh a pound anymore.

Who said it did?

But of course it weighs less after fat has dripped out, so it could have more PER OUNCE - so then you're not comparing the same thing. And it loses water too, which has no calories but it does have weight. But yes, the whole thing will have fewer calories in it than you started with.

All good answers, but remember, if it's a meat or steak,that hasn't got all those rubs and marinades. Then they are healthy calories,

Raw meat has more water. Cooked meat, a lot of time loses water, and becomes more concentrated.

It does when you realize cooking is a chemical change, and gut bacteria expends less energy on cooked food. There's evidence for this not related to size, btw.

because the water cooks off so you are left with more calories per unit weight