Protein

glarant
glarant Posts: 5 Member
edited November 28 in Food and Nutrition
My diary is showing 0 grams of protein in a 3 oz serving of grilled salmon. Why? Google shows there is approximately 19 grams.
Thank you.

Replies

  • musicfan68
    musicfan68 Posts: 1,143 Member
    Because it was user entered and a LOT of entries are wrong.
  • glarant
    glarant Posts: 5 Member
    Bummer! Inaccurate info is going to make tracking nutrients etc difficult or impossible! :/
  • Thehardmakesitworthit
    Thehardmakesitworthit Posts: 838 Member
    I try to use the entries that have the GREEN checkmark as I understand those to be confirmed.......
  • AnvilHead
    AnvilHead Posts: 18,343 Member
    1) Add "USDA" to your search. It's not 100%, but it helps filter out the bogus entries by people who don't know what they're doing.

    2) It gets easier as time goes on - once you've entered your frequently used foods (and verified their accuracy), you can use them instead of searching and coming up with BS database entries.
  • musicfan68
    musicfan68 Posts: 1,143 Member
    Thehardmakesitworthit wrote: »
    I try to use the entries that have the GREEN checkmark as I understand those to be confirmed.......

    Those are wrong a lot also. You need to, like AnvilHead said, put USDA in the search also, or look it up on google and put it in yourself. Then you'll have it for the next time you eat the same food.
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 10,098 Member
    AnvilHead wrote: »
    1) Add "USDA" to your search. It's not 100%, but it helps filter out the bogus entries by people who don't know what they're doing.

    2) It gets easier as time goes on - once you've entered your frequently used foods (and verified their accuracy), you can use them instead of searching and coming up with BS database entries.

    The entries with "USDA" in their names are also user-entries, but it does seem as though on average the people creating those entries were more likely to have checked the USDA database and to have made a conscientious attempt to get it right. I do frequently run into "USDA" entries where the user didn't understand that the numbers in the USDA database for vitamin C, vitamin A, calcium, and iron are not percentages but raw weights that have to be converted to percentages of RDA for the MFP database.

    The best way to ensure accuracy is to go to the USDA nutrient database, find the appropriate entry (e.g., "Fish, salmon, coho, wild, cooked, moist heat," and copy the exact string into MFP search field. Normally your top result will be the correct one. Bonus: you have the USDA entry available to cross-check the MFP entry. Once you've done this enough to have a good sense of the USDA syntax, you'll usually be able to find the USDA-based entry created by MFP, rather than a user-created entry.

    If I'm lazy, I'll look at the entry and if the macros make sense (i.e. a piece of animal flesh with no protein doesn't make sense), has an entry for potassium (barring fats and oils, almost all food has some potassium), and has entries for vits A and C and for calcium and iron (rather than 0s for all four), and some of those entries aren't rounded to multiples of five or 10 (package labels typically round to nearest 5 or 10%), I'll accept it as accurate without checking the USDA database.
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