Using the MFP recipe tool

redwingsfan6712

Hi all, do any of you use the conversion tool on here? Where you go to recipes and enter the URL of a recipe you found online? I've entered 2 different recipes from food.com on here and the calorie counts between them are way off. The ingredients are all correct, but there's a good 100 calorie difference per serving between what food.com claims the recipe is to what it has here. Any ideas on this? I don't want to be miscalculating stuff!

CurlyCockney

I used it for the first time this week, and nearly all the nutrition data was off. If you click the individual items, you can search for more accurate entries or add them yourself.

redwingsfan6712

Ok so I'll just do quick add and use the calorie count from food.Com then. I don't have time to manually enter all ingredients in these recipes. Bummer would've been a great time saver

CurlyCockney

No, I used the recipe importer but then changed the items once it was in MFP by clicking Edit Recipe. It saved some time, but you're right - not as much as it could have done.

redwingsfan6712

Funny thing is though, I didn't have to edit any of the items - they all imported correctly - just not the nutrition amounts.

CurlyCockney

Ahh I see, it will still work though (hopefully!)

I mean the clicking it and modifying bit ;-)

pinkiemarie252

Maybe different serving sizes/number of servings?

Francl27

Never ever trust the calorie count given by recipe websites. It's always off.

redwingsfan6712

So are y'all saying that MFP has the nutrition amounts right and the creator of the recipe does not? All of the correct information imported from the food.com website into MFP, servings and all. Everything was correct but on one dish MFP said the calorie count was only 174, while the website said 280...big difference! I want to be sure that I'm logging correctly, but don't have the time to manually enter every single recipe.

lporter229

I import the recipe and then go through and verify that each item that MFP matched it up to is correct. Sometimes it gets confused on the quantity or it picks a match that is incorrect. Usually, most of the items are correct, but I have to modify one or two of them manually. If you have one incorrect conversion, it can throw everything way off.

redwingsfan6712

Right - which is exactly what I did. All of the ingredients and serving sizes are correct - but the nutritional value was way off compared to the recipe from food.com. That was my original post. Why does this happen and which caloric count am I to go off of?

Barbs2222

Can I look at it? Will you post the link to the recipe?

redwingsfan6712

http://www.food.com/slideshow/healthy-dinner-recipes-159/cashew-chicken-31
http://www.food.com/slideshow/healthy-dinner-recipes-159/japanese-fried-rice-2

Barbs2222

I really thought it was going to be in the meat. But mfp gave more grams of protein for less calories. The food.com recipe shows way way more fat. Maybe a fattier chicken? I'm new at this too so maybe someone with experience will post the right answer. I only looked at the cashew chicken. It looks yummy btw

redwingsfan6712

Right? That's the thing...I have no idea what to trust!!

Barbs2222

I would trust mfp personally. It's their business to get the calories right. I think the fat count at food.com looks really high. I wish food.com broke the recipe down for us.

redwingsfan6712

I know. For now I'm finding recipes that aren't super long so I can manually enter them

lporter229

It's the cashews in the cashew chicken. The MFP selection says 380 calories per cup, which is about how many calories are in a half cup. That would also explain the difference in fat. Sometimes it takes a bit of practice/general knowledge of calories to spot which entry may be wrong. That's the problem with the recipe builder.

You can always use a half cup of cashews if you are trying to reduce the calories.

Barbs2222

Oh thanks Iporter229, mfp imported the recipe for me as 1 oz. cashews. Well, that explains that! Thanks.

Editme12

Well I just tried a recipe import and had a similar problem. I ended up going through and editing with the barcode on the ingredients I used. The biggest offender, MFP imported white sugar as brown sugar, so I switched that (just by searching), but the sugar calories seemed high, so I ended up using the barcode method for that one as well-- turns out, it was off by 500 calories!!! (I was making a cake, btw). Because of that I went through and checked them all... most of them were too high, actually, but there were a few ingredients that were too low in calories.

megisaloser

I've had similar problems in the past and have seen many threads about the recipe builder giving increased calorie counts. MFP has responded and said they know it's an issue and are working on it, so hopefully it will be fixed soon! In the mean time I just follow the MFP calories. I'd rather count higher calories and eat under, than lower calories and be eating over.

enterdanger

If you are on a desktop instead of a phone you can opt to use the old recipe builder which makes you search each ingredient. I use this if I don't have a ton of ingredients.