Estimating calories for home cooked meals

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  • OldHobo
    OldHobo Posts: 647 Member
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    DaveinSK wrote: »
    I appreciate the answers. I do like the idea of just weighing the crockpot or lasagna pan on the scale when it's done cooking, even though it means I need to go out and buy a larger food scale.

    @nuffer, that's one of the things I struggle with. Rice for instance I prefer al dente, so I don't use the 2 part to 1 part ratio when making it. Because of that I can't really use the weights for a cup of prepared rice since mine is more calorie dense. Ideally I'd measure out say 100g of rice to get the number of calories in the pot, then weigh the pot when it's done cooking to find the total cooked weight, then do (serving weight/total weight)*total calories to get the serving values. When you're mixing ingredients where some have pre-cooked nutritional info and some have prepared info, it gets a little tougher to keep straight.
    Well good luck to you however you work it out but sounds like a tough road to travel. Your 100 grams of rice have the same caloric/nutrient value whether you add 175 or 200 g of liquid. If you weigh the finished dish you are weighing the water too. Some of that water is lost through evaporation. Sometimes a lot of it. When I enter ingredients for a soup or a pilaf I don't care about the weight of the water because there are no nutrients or calories. If I add stock that does have calories and nutrients it is important to count all of calories not reduce them by percentage of evaporation. Presumably the calories and nutrients don't evaporate. So I guess I'm saying, It's the weight of stuff that goes into the oven that counts. Not the weight that comes out.
  • DaveinSK
    DaveinSK Posts: 86 Member
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    Pspetal wrote: »
    It doesn't matter how you prepare your rice. The next time you do it, just measure how much raw rice you put into the vessel. If you put in 1 cup (which is about 650 cals), put that down in your recipe builder. After you are done boiling it to the consistency you like, measure the total amount it yields. If it yields 2.5 cups, put the number of servings in your recipe builder as 2.5 assuming 1 serving = 1 cup. Since that is the way you always make it, each time you add rice to your diary, simply log how much you put on your plate. If you put 1 cup in your plate, add 1 serving of rice from your recipe tab. It will be customised to your preference and you don't have to use the MFP database entries.

    I think that's pretty similar to what I was imagining, though using volume instead of weight. Measure the calories going in, then measure the total volume/weight and serving volume/weight to get the amount you actually ate. We don't really have standard serving sizes, it's usually more along the lines of a big scoop for the adults, little scoop for the kids.

    I do like the idea of using the recipe builder, though I don't think I've made two identical pots of chili in my life. :)
  • DaveinSK
    DaveinSK Posts: 86 Member
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    OldHobo wrote: »
    DaveinSK wrote: »
    I appreciate the answers. I do like the idea of just weighing the crockpot or lasagna pan on the scale when it's done cooking, even though it means I need to go out and buy a larger food scale.

    @nuffer, that's one of the things I struggle with. Rice for instance I prefer al dente, so I don't use the 2 part to 1 part ratio when making it. Because of that I can't really use the weights for a cup of prepared rice since mine is more calorie dense. Ideally I'd measure out say 100g of rice to get the number of calories in the pot, then weigh the pot when it's done cooking to find the total cooked weight, then do (serving weight/total weight)*total calories to get the serving values. When you're mixing ingredients where some have pre-cooked nutritional info and some have prepared info, it gets a little tougher to keep straight.
    Well good luck to you however you work it out but sounds like a tough road to travel. Your 100 grams of rice have the same caloric/nutrient value whether you add 175 or 200 g of liquid. If you weigh the finished dish you are weighing the water too. Some of that water is lost through evaporation. Sometimes a lot of it. When I enter ingredients for a soup or a pilaf I don't care about the weight of the water because there are no nutrients or calories. If I add stock that does have calories and nutrients it is important to count all of calories not reduce them by percentage of evaporation. Presumably the calories and nutrients don't evaporate. So I guess I'm saying, It's the weight of stuff that goes into the oven that counts. Not the weight that comes out.

    Yeah, I believe we're thinking along the same lines. The nutrition is determined by what goes into the dish. However, since we make a big dish and then it's served out in various sizes to different people, it's desirable to have an easy way of mapping calories per g or per ml of finished product when the inputs can change weight/volume during cooking.
    My biggest problem is when certain things only have info for prepared product, instead of raw.
  • DearestWinter
    DearestWinter Posts: 595 Member
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    I build the recipe and log it with the number of servings equal to the total number of grams. Then I can weigh a portion and just log it as 120 servings (if it's 120 grams) for example.
  • Pspetal
    Pspetal Posts: 426 Member
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    I have over 175 recipes in my recipe section! Those are pretty much the only recipes I make and keep repeating. Each time I'm sure I put in different amounts of ingredients even if I'm making them the same way because I never measure ingredients; I go by the taste. I only measure them when I make something for the first time.

    Earlier I would make a new recipe for everything I cooked even if I was repeating a recipe from before. I realized that they yielded the same calories give or take 10-20 calories per serving. So I stopped doing that... It wasn't worth the effort for 10-20 calories.

    I used to just eyeball my portions too, but it turned out I was underestimating how much I was eating. So now I measure everything that goes on my plate. I don't eat less or starve myself, I only measure it so I can log it accurately. Going over calories doesn't matter but you need to know how much you went over.
  • ruggedshutter
    ruggedshutter Posts: 389 Member
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    I use the recipe builder the best that I can. At the end of the day, we can only be so accurate. Just do the best that you can and if you can't avoid it, estimate to the best of you ability.
  • earlnabby
    earlnabby Posts: 8,171 Member
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    Another lover of the recipe builder. I don't weigh my dish after I make it though. I live alone so I will be eating the whole thing so I portion it out into the number of servings I entered into the recipe builder by eyeballing. I know if I am a little over in one, I will be a little under in another and it balances out. Obviously, this doesn't work as well if you are cooking for a family. I generally eat it a couple of days, then freeze the leftovers in single servings so I always have some back-up for the times I don't have time to cook. I generally make either 4 or 6 servings.
  • alliesgettinghealthy
    alliesgettinghealthy Posts: 87 Member
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    I weigh all ingredients before cooking and then I weigh the entire cooked product. I put all the uncooked ingredients into the recipe builder and make the serving size however many grams the cooked recipe added up to. Then I take however much of the food I'm going to eat and weigh it and add however many grams into how many servings I ate.
  • DaveinSK
    DaveinSK Posts: 86 Member
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    LOL... I think I broke my account.
    I was trying to add a recipe from the web to my recipe box, from
    http://www.food.com/recipe/chickpea-daal-indian-24351
    It isolated the ingredients correctly, but when I clicked on match ingredients it sat there loading for a little while before erroring out. Now every time I try to click on Food->Recipes, I get this error:
    "There was a problem with your request

    Sorry, but a server error occurred processing your request. Our team has been notified of the issue."
  • callsitlikeiseeit
    callsitlikeiseeit Posts: 8,627 Member
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    food scale + recipe builder = problem solved
  • callsitlikeiseeit
    callsitlikeiseeit Posts: 8,627 Member
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    DaveinSK wrote: »
    LOL... I think I broke my account.
    I was trying to add a recipe from the web to my recipe box, from
    http://www.food.com/recipe/chickpea-daal-indian-24351
    It isolated the ingredients correctly, but when I clicked on match ingredients it sat there loading for a little while before erroring out. Now every time I try to click on Food->Recipes, I get this error:
    "There was a problem with your request

    Sorry, but a server error occurred processing your request. Our team has been notified of the issue."

    i added 2 recipes in earlier without problem

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