Food without nutrition lables

fanatic03_99

Things are going well for me so far, but I was just wondering if any of you have tips for how to handle prepared foods or foods that don't come with any kind of nutrition label?

The two biggest problems for me are soups that are already prepared at the grocery store, some of which I can find nutrition information for but others they don't carry, and breads/pasta/meats that I buy at local markets (which is where I do 90% of my shopping each week) which never have any kind of label. I've tried asking, but they just make it, they don't keep track of nutrition for it.

I've been selecting what I hope is the closest match in the database, but nutrition can vary so wildly for things that are seemingly the same things that I'm never quite sure if what I'm choosing is the best option.

Has anybody figured out any tricks or have any advice for picking the best option for things where nutrition isn't readily available? Do you just find the highest calorie option and go with that?

Thanks in advance for any help .

Need2Exerc1se

I think choosing the closest match is probably the best you can do for prepared foods like that.

Kalikel

You just have to guess. I try to go with the highest estimate so that I'm covered if what I ate was high.

cwolfman13

for meats and what not, just look up "whatevermeat - USDA" ...for breads, you'll just have to do the best you can...for pasta, just log whatever kind of pasta it is...most pasta is pretty standard...

for prepared foods, you're just going to have to pick whatever is similar in the database and use your best judgement.

gramarye

This actually comes up for us a lot in these parts; we have our weekly writer's group meetings at a grocery store with a lot of precooked food items.

Search by the name of the grocery store -- you'd be surprised by how many things are in the database. For instance, I like to buy Walmart's "everything" bread periodically. Having a food scale helps with this, because I can say, "Okay, I had an ounce of white bread, and I can fall back on that measurement and the default 'bread, white' entry to get 'close enough'." Also, use the app's barcode scanner on anything with a barcode. It's awesome and shocking how much nutrition info is available when you hunt for it.

If I'm doing, like, grocery store deli chili, I'll look at several entries for "chili" -- ignoring anything that says "homemade" -- and check the average calorie count for various entries. I discount anything super low and aim for the higher end of average.

Above all: I try to minimize eating things that I can't adequately count so that I can go into those situations being comfortable with "close enough." All calorie counting is "close enough" anyway, so once in a while it's alright to guess and not be exactly on-count. It would be challenging for me to do it all the time, but it's totally okay to guesstimate sometimes.

Paging @diannethegeek for other options.

mbaker566

also check and put in the grocery store stuff. I have found lots of roundy's deli meats. some of which is confirmed

essentially we are all just try to do our best

fanatic03_99

Thanks everybody for your input! Seems like I'm just gonna keep doing what I'm doing and try to stay smart about my database choices. And I do look up the grocery store stuff when I buy it. Sometimes I get lucky and it's there, but a lot of the time nothing shows up - or, if I scan the bar code, it's for an unrelated product.

When I can, I do try to make things from scratch so I can be as accurate as possible with the ingredient and calorie counts but sometimes it's just a lot easier and more convenient to buy that corn, black bean, and onion salsa than it is to make it myself lol.

diannethegeek

I agree that sometimes we just have to do the best we can. I eat out once or twice a month at local restaurants that don't have nutrition information and I eat at my parent's house every so often. And while I have my dad trained to leave out the packaging so that I can scan things, I have no idea how much butter, oil, etc. he's added. Sometimes I just have to search the database for something close and guess high.

The good news is that it gets easier as you go along. Your results will tell you whether or not your guesses are right, so if you don't lose weight at the pace you want, then start guessing higher. You'll get a feel for how to eyeball things like this as you get more used to seeing what a portion size looks like.

Sounds like you're off to a good start so far. Keep it up!