Recipies--Weights and Measures

fyoung1111

I most often prepare recipies by using ingredient weight instead of volume ie .7g of corse Kosher salt instead if 1/4 tsp. When I use myfitnesspal to create a new recipe, this is often difficult or impossible to achieve with any degree of precision.

As an example, if I want to add 1 pound of dried canellini beans to a recipe, I am offered options of 1/4 cup or 1 container (2 1/2 cups 117g) neither of which I can directly use. I can do some math and figure out that 117g = .258 lbs. Therefore, 1 lb must be 3.876 containers or 9.69 cups which doesn't exactly pass the sniff test. It is maddening and happens with nearly any recipe I try to create.

It would be really, really nice if MFP would provide for easy conversions within and among both the metric and imperial systems. It woud be better yet, if it supported volume/weight equivalencies (such as provided in The Book of Yields: Accuracy in Food Costing and Purchasing by Francis Lynch). Then we couls all use whatever weights and measures are familiar, convenient or preferred ie 1 lb. of dried great northermn beans with 1/2 tsp of salt and 250 g of andouille sausage and 8 cups of chicken broth. Why not?

fyoung1111

I penned this little complaint/suggestion over two years ago. Very little, if any, progress has been made since then. Certainly MFP should understand that a foundation of weight loss is healthy eating and that healthy eating begins with preparing your own meals preferably from whole foods.

The recipe importer is nice in theory but, in practice, I have found it almost useless. Just try importing this: http://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/browse-all-recipes/slow-cooker-white-bean-soup-with-andouille-and-collards. It is a simple 9 ingredient soup. The beans get imported a oregano. A LOT of oregano. Almost all of the other ingredients are messed up as well. As soon as you try to fix things, you are back in measurement Hell. Lets take those beans for example. What could be simpler than a one-pound bag of dried great northern beans. After you FIND the dried Great Northern beans in the database, you get these choices for quantity from the first three "brands" on the list:

Krogers_______________________Giant_________________________Safeway
¼ Cup________________________¼ Cup dry_____________________¼ cup (35g)
3 oz. Cooked___________________1 Cup dry_____________________1 cup (35g)
1 oz. Cooked___________________1 container (2½ cup dries ea.)_____1 container (3.3 cup (35g) ea.)
½ Cup dry__________________________________________________1.0 ounce
___________________________________________________________35 grams

It seems pretty clear that no one is doing quality control on this front and the way it is working now is far more work that it is worth! It's almost enough to make you switch to bar coded fare but I won't go there.

Come on MFP. If you are worth half a billion dollars, you can fix a little thing like this.

mathandcats

Converting lbs into grams isn't really that hard. Yes, it's annoying that the recipe builder matches ingredients wrong, but it is getting better. I guess I don't really see what the big deal is.

Queenmunchy

There are so many entries that usually one fits. Did you input "dried beans" or just look up the type of bean? If all else fails, create your own entry.

fyoung1111

The thing is that the web is supposed to make this stuff easier. I did go ahead and correct that little recipe. It took about 20 minutes instead if 2.

So really there is a problem and an opportunity here. The problem is that the data is often very poor and the units of measure are not at all standardized. The opportunity is to let computers do what they do best and accept user input in whatever units they desire as in 10 grams of salt, one cup of rice, and 100 ml of butter.

OldHobo

I agree that the inconsistencies and outright inaccuracies in the database are maddening, but I think it's the price you pay for allowing everybody to enter or edit data. GIGO (garbage in, garbage out) was the IT justification for restricting data access for many years. Sure it would be easier if everybody did it your way, or my way, or the MFP coding boss's way, but then, I think, we'd have even more complaints.
Having said that, improvements to enable more "code-driven" unit conversion would be very helpful.