Convert Meal to Recipe?

Ms2sf

Is there a way to convert a meal to a recipe?
With a meal I can easily scan ingredients. I tried copying and pasting but the ingredients didn't always match.

Hummingbird914

It's on this app. Go to my recipes and on the top right click the + . You can put your ingredients in there and it'll add it up.

Bean174

Sometimes it takes a couple of tries to get the ingredients to match up. You can replace the item until you find the one that you need.

lynn_glenmont

You can save a meal so that you can log the same meal again. Is that what you want to do?

CyberTone

I have tried, but I have not found an easy method. It appears that the My Meals database table is closely associated with the Food Diary tables, which makes creating and logging a My Meals item rather easy, on both the Web version and the mobile apps. However, the Recipe database table appears to be quite separate from the Food Diary tables, with different software scripts employed by the Recipe Importer, which makes creating and editing Recipes a nightmare (in my opinion).

I now use my sixth meal slot as my "Recipe Importer Testing" area as a "test bed" to log the items from the Food Database, either on the Web version or on the mobile app when I want to use the barcode scanning function. Then I use the Old Recipe Calculator, found only on the Web version, to enter each individual item, yet again, to create and save the Recipe. It is definitely a lot of extra work, but I truly despise using the Recipe Importer and prefer the greater control of adding each ingredient one at a time to the Old Recipe Calculator. Just note that if you use the Old Recipe Calculator, once you save the Recipe, any edits to that Recipe can only be done using the software scripts associated with the newer Recipe Importer function. MFP removed the simpler Old Recipe Calculator editing scripts in favor of the newer scripts, which in my opinion was a step backwards.

Good luck!

jollytoad

What is the point in the recipe creation tools and saved meals? - just do away with them completely and allow us to select some items from the diary to simply be saved as a recipe/meal that can be easily added back into the diary on another day.

shadowfax_c11

Some of use like and use those tools. The recipe tool is great for batch cooking where you can make enough of everything for multiple meals and prepackage them. It is also helpful if you find a recipe you want to try to find out what the nutritional content is so you ca plan it into a future day. Then you can just add that item to any daily log meal in one click.

The remember meal function is great when I want to log the leftovers for tonight's dinner into another day's lunch. I can remember the meal, then insert it into the lunch slot on the day I am going to eat it and adjust the amounts if needed.

The recipe builder definitely has a lot of glitches though and I do hope they get it working better. It can be a real PITA to get a a recipe built and an even bigger one to go back and edit it the next time I make that recipe.

mitchellcochran

Found this and it still works. http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/mike/view/tip-easily-convert-your-old-meals-into-recipes-32320

CyberTone

mitchellcochran wrote: »

Found this and it still works. http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/mike/view/tip-easily-convert-your-old-meals-into-recipes-32320

I had no clue you could do this. I just tested it and it works great.

This is definitely a game changer for me, because now I can use an existing Recipe I have saved as an ingredient in a new Recipe by temporarily saving it as a My Meals item, then adding the My Meals item to a new Recipe.

Thank you for finding this. This is awesome!

Just don't let the MFP software guys know, because I'm sure they will find some way to mess this one up for us.

ccerrillo2

The link is dead, but still accessible through Wayback Machine https://web.archive.org/web/20180118024355/http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/mike/view/tip-easily-convert-your-old-meals-into-recipes-32320

CyberTone

ccerrillo2 wrote: »

The link is dead, but still accessible through Wayback Machine https://web.archive.org/web/20180118024355/http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/mike/view/tip-easily-convert-your-old-meals-into-recipes-32320

Here is a post I created in MFP Community in October 2016 with instructions on how to use My Meals to create a Recipe on the web version using the Old Recipe Calculator instead of the Recipe Builder. It is much easier to do it this way than trying to search for items using the Add Recipe Manually function of the Recipe Builder.

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10471173/how-to-use-my-foods-and-my-meals-in-a-recipe-a-workaround