How to Use My Foods and My Meals in a Recipe - a Workaround

CyberTone

You can search for and add personal My Foods items using the Old Recipe Calculator found on the web/desktop version only. You can use the browser on your computer or mobile device to access the web/desktop version.

I have started using a multi-step process for creating a Recipe by saving a My Meals item, then searching and adding the My Meals item using the Old Recipe Calculator. This workaround not only allows me to use my personal My Foods items in a Recipe, it creates a saved My Meals item that I can use as the base to duplicate the original Recipe with minor changes, and it allows me to use a Recipe (a saved My Meals item) within a new Recipe.

1. Go to an empty Food Diary Meal slot on a future date. I created a sixth Meal Slot in Food Diary as a test bed and named it "Recipe Testing."

2. Search and add food items to the empty Food Diary Meal slot.

3. Click Quick Tools > Remember Meal and save the My Meals item with a descriptive name. I strongly suggest to put your MFP username in the My Meals name so that the MFP search can find it more easily.

4. Create a new Recipe using the Old Recipe Calculator at FOOD > Recipes > Old Recipe Calculator > Enter New Recipe.

5. Click Add Ingredients, then search for the remembered My Meals name and add it to the Recipe. Note that all food items from the My Meals will be populated individually in the new Recipe. If desired, search and add other items from My Foods or the public Food Database.

6. Save the Recipe with a descriptive name. Note that once saved, you can only edit the Recipe using the "New" Recipe Builder workflow, which will not search for your My Foods or My Meals items; so make sure you have added all items correctly. If not, you can always delete the Recipe, then go to your saved My Meals item and edit it there and start again.

7. If you have created a dedicated Food Diary Meal slot for "Recipe Testing," go back to the Meal slot, edit each food item to quantity 0.0001 so that the Calories and nutrient values will now show as zero, but they will remain in the Food Diary and be available in your Recent list so that you don't have to search for them again. Otherwise, just delete the items from the Food Diary Meal slot.

CyberTone

I created a graphic to show how this is possible.

All of the items in the My Meals list in the graphic below are personal items I have not shared to the public Food Database, and they get transferred to the created Recipe.

samaramae1

Thank you CyberTone for this very helpful answer to my question (not posted) about how to use my painstakenly created food list to create my recipes. The public data base was driving me crazy with all the misinformation. I was able to follow your instructions but cannot work out how to break down the total ingredients in a recipe into serving size quantities. I do hope you are still following this thread as it took me three and a half hours to find this answer. many thanks in advance, samara

eminater

I am also having some issues with the recipe builder because, same as samara that the public data has a lot of misinformation. i will look into this to see if it will help me.

CyberTone

@samaramae1

Since a recipe makes a batch of something, and you usually eat a portion of the whole thing, it is customary to measure that portion (a serving) by volume (cup, slice, piece, scoop) or weight (ounces, grams). Measuring by weight is normally more accurate than by volume, but many people do it by volume for the convenience, or because they don't have a food scale. I did not use a food scale until I reached maintenance, so I measured everything by volume while I was losing.

There are lots of ways to determine what size to make a serving, it is up to you. For a one-pot recipe, you can either weigh the final batch and make a serving size one ounce or one gram, or one sixth of the total weight, or the weight of the whole batch. For a one-pot recipe, I normally make a serving size equal 1 US measuring cup (about 230 grams); at the end, I add just enough water to make the final batch equal to a multiple of 1 cup or 230 grams, such as 10 cups or 2300 grams total.

Suppose you choose to make your serving size 1 US measuring cup and you don't care about the weight.

Make the recipe, add all of the total amounts of ingredients to the Recipe Tool and guess that your recipe will make 6 cups. Put the number of servings as 6 into the Recipe Tool for starters; you can always go back and edit the recipe to change how many servings the batch actually made.

When the batch is done, take a 1 cup measuring cup and measure out how many cups the final batch makes as you scoop it into a second pot. Suppose the final count of full cups was 6, but you had about a half cup of the batch left. Just add some water to the seventh cup to make it a full cup, and stir that seventh cup into the rest. Now you have a batch that measures a total of 7 cups.

Edit the recipe in the Recipe Tool to change 6 servings to 7 servings.The Recipe Tool will now calculate the Calories and other nutrient information per 1 measuring cup serving.

When you serve a portion, measure out by cups. So if someone takes 2 cups of the batch, log 2 servings of the recipe. If someone takes one and a half cups, log 1.5 servings of the recipe.

I would suggest putting the final serving size and per serving Calorie information in the name of the Recipe (you can always edit the name) so that you can easily see that information when you look at your Recipe list, or when you log it in your Food Diary.

I now use a food scale and weigh my recipes. I use the following format for naming a recipe. Yeah, it may be a little overkill, but I can see all of the information at a glance.

Recipe - [Keywords] [Date] [Total_Weight] [Number_of_Servings] [Weight_per_Serving] [Calories_per_Serving]

Examples:

​Recipe - Macaroni, Pumpkin Chipotle 2018.02.14 2760g 6Srv 460g 439Cals

Recipe - Slovak Cabbage Soup 2018.01.30 3680g 16Srv 230g 80Cals

Recipe - Curry, Spec. Selected Tikka Chicken 2017.12.14 3910g 17Srv 230g 137Cals

Recipe - Jambalaya, Chicken Chorizo Mussels 2015.10.03 4140g 18Srv 230g 169Cals

samaramae1

thank you CyberTone. It took a while but I finally worked this out. Check out my take on how to avoid using the public data base under 'success stories' 'a way to avoid the dreaded public database' FYI I am a 72 year old female and this is the first time I have been active in a message board/forum

c_ansari

This post was a huge help, even so many years later. MFP needs to incorporate this functionality without the need for this workaround.

noved101

@CyberTone You're a genius! Thanks so much for sharing your workaround. So many years later and MFP still doesn't allow you to add your own Foods to Recipes

alessandromedici4688

you're a genius, thanks!