which food entry to choose from

aniqa109

Hi all
I was looking for a food entry and couldnt find what i needed. Especially as people cook food differently. So how would i know which entry to choose from?
im Asian so i eat a lot of curries and ive tried googling some of the foods and there is a big difference in the calories!

Myweightlossdiary

If you cook a lot of meals from scratch, the most accurate way to figure out the calorie content (as well as the other nutrients you want to track), is to add this manually yourself. It takes a little bit of time but if you make a certain dish the same way all the time, and it's hard for you to find the exact dish you are looking for, it would be good for you in the long run. Once you add the recipe, you can use it in the future for other meals making it convenient for you to document that meal.

Click the "Food" tab, go to "Recipes" tab, click "Add Recipe Manually" link, follow the instructions to add all of your ingredients. I have found the more specific you are, the more likely you'll find the ingredient you are looking for. However, it can be a bit tricky and it may not be 100% accurate, but you should be closer to what the food actually is than just taking someone else's recipe that may end up being way off.

I make lasagna sometimes and change it up quite a bit. Each time I change it up, I change the recipe and add it in my personal recipe section.

It's fun to do once you get the hang of it, but if you eat something different all the time, it may end up being a lot of work for you. Of course, my fitness pal is only a tool to help you gauge what you are eating, it's not meant to be exactly 100% perfect. Hope this helps you at least a little bit. Good luck!

MKEgal

If you can't scan a bar code or put in a brand, put in the ingredients.
I search for the food + USDA to have the best chance of getting an accurate entry.
DON'T use anything that has someone's name or "homemade".

As an example, with my salad for lunch today, I'll have an avocado. This is the entry I'm using: Avocado, California - Usda Verified, 100 g

And for the meatloaf I made last night, I put in the ingredients:
Usda - Pork, Ground, 84% Lean, 2 oz
Usda - Ground Sirloin 90% Lean Meat / 10% Fat, Crumbles, Cooked, Pan-browned, 2 oz
Usda - Onions, 20.0 g

ActuarialChef

MKEgal wrote: »

If you can't scan a bar code or put in a brand, put in the ingredients.
I search for the food + USDA to have the best chance of getting an accurate entry.
DON'T use anything that has someone's name or "homemade".

As an example, with my salad for lunch today, I'll have an avocado. This is the entry I'm using: Avocado, California - Usda Verified, 100 g

And for the meatloaf I made last night, I put in the ingredients:
Usda - Pork, Ground, 84% Lean, 2 oz
Usda - Ground Sirloin 90% Lean Meat / 10% Fat, Crumbles, Cooked, Pan-browned, 2 oz
Usda - Onions, 20.0 g

If you want true USDA values, I would not use this method. These entries can be edited by users.

Instead, search for "Pork, ground, lean" or "onions, raw" and choose the entry that DOES NOT have an asterisk (*) before the name. These are the entries that MFP initially started the database with, using a direct feed/database export from the USDA database found here: ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/

All of these entries will have many options for measurements: grams, 100-grams, ounces, etc., plus any food-specific measurements that are estimates (i.e. 1 medium, 1 slice, etc.)


All that being said, if you are not in the US, some prepared foods that are available (i.e. pasta, rice, etc.) may not have the same nutritional values as the ones sold here and listed in the USDA database. Just a thought.