Recipe serving size confusion in MyFitnessPal

heathersundean146
heathersundean146 Posts: 3 Member
in Recipes
This has been bugging me when typing in my home-cooked recipes in MyFitnessPal. Ok, so say I have a veggie soup that I make on a regular basis and I want to create a recipe for it. I enter in all the ingredients, and MFP asks how many servings the full recipe is. Let's say I make a guess and say it's 6. Then, whenever I eat the soup, I have to remember that one serving is one sixth a pot of soup. I can't just measure out two cups of soup like a normal person and enter that I ate two cups of soup. I don't understand how this is supposed to work at all, for people who cook at home frequently. Help?
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Replies

  • CharlieBeansmomTracey
    CharlieBeansmomTracey Posts: 7,682 Member
    heathersundean146 wrote: »
    We submit the ingredients and what we consider a serving to be, sure, but we didn't write the computer code behind the scenes that determines how that data is processed and displayed for our use. I just wish I could tell it what food I'm putting in the pot, then tell it I plan to eat 1.5 cups of said food, and have it tell me how many calories that is. It seems infinitely simpler. Anyway, I'll quit grumbling about it. It is what it is.

    to tell it what you are putting in the pit and how much of those ingredients you have to weigh said ingredients and input that into the recipe builder. it will tell you how many calories a serving is. but what I do is weigh everything(its a pain at first) that Im putting ,write it down, cook said ingredients, then when its done I weigh the finished products total weight(subtracting for the container its in) .

    I write that down. I then take out what I want and write that number down as that is what a serving is and divide it into the total weight. I also put on my recipe say its veggie soup I will put veggie soup-XXXg serving as the title of the recipe. this way I know what a serving is for that recipe. you can always go into the recipe and edit it down the road if you make the same thing but use more or less of the same ingredients or add or omit something. its a lot easier that way too so you dont have to keep doing it over and over.

    the recipe builder will then tell you how many calories,fat,protein,etc is in a serving. providing you use adequate entries from the database which is why its best to weigh and cross reference.once you get it down it becomes easier over time. its not really that time consuming .I weigh all my food recipe of not, its the only way I can be accurate in how many calories Im eating but thats me.
  • iamauntbeth
    iamauntbeth Posts: 13 Member
    I have written a few recipes down. But I find nowhere to give direction on how to make it, or when I prefer pecans in place of the walnuts the original recipe calls for.
  • CharlieBeansmomTracey
    CharlieBeansmomTracey Posts: 7,682 Member
    iamauntbeth wrote: »
    I have written a few recipes down. But I find nowhere to give direction on how to make it, or when I prefer pecans in place of the walnuts the original recipe calls for.

    that when you put in your own recipe with the pecans instead of the walnuts put all the original ingredients down and then put the pecans in. as for direction on how to make it thats when you have that info aside. you can import recipes from sites to MFP recipe builder too. but you still will have to know how to make it. and if you weigh everything the recipe will says cups or spoons or what have ya
  • maureenkhilde
    maureenkhilde Posts: 849 Member
    To me the key, it takes a bit to get used to. And once you get past that it is really not a big deal. I weigh everything first. Ok if I am adding 4 cups of tap water I indicate just that. But weigh everything, meat, veges and so on. I put in an estimate for servings if this is the first time I am making it. For soups I have decided that 1 Cup is my serving size. And when it is all cooked. I measure out in 1 cup, and weigh In same size containers so I know that they all weigh the same. And then if I have to change the number of servings you can go back and do an edit. I figure it is a one time edit, not a big deal. But in my notes to myself I indicate how many 1 cup servings I will get. And which containers I use. I do this for pretty much everything desserts like puddings, cookies, stew, Mexican dinners, soups. I really like this feature, because I see serving size and all the macros.
  • LoKoMi
    LoKoMi Posts: 51 Member
    I put the serving size in the title of the recipe. For example this past week we had:

    1/2 C mac n cheese
    1 C white chili
    4oz Italian roast
    1/2 C sauce and vegetables

    There are four in my house who are counting calories, one other using MFP and two use a different app. I do the majority of the meal planning, grocery shopping, calorie counting, and cooking so I need to make it as easy as possible FOR ME 🤣

    I know weight is far more accurate BUT with four people using a scale at dinner (which is usually 8pm or later due to work and class schedules) it is much simpler to just use a measuring cup as a serving spoon and call it close enough for most things. I have the lowest calories/day so I am more careful with weighing portions at less hectic meals.
  • metaylor1982
    metaylor1982 Posts: 1 Member
    I literally weight everything. Unless it's a sauce.. like I make a copy cat rubios sauce, it has a total of 1 cup liquid, everything else is spices. I plan on a tablespoon being a serving so I make it 16 servings... food food on the other hand, instant pot, crock pot, on the stove.. I just weigh it, decide by 4 and call it a day.
  • allieeveryday
    allieeveryday Posts: 85 Member
    I just learned this: I put the recipe into the recipe builder, weigh every single thing (including the pot) and entering it into MFP minus the pot, and I start by putting the servings as 1. Then I weigh the final product when it's done, removing the weight of the pot. Then change the serving size to however many grams the whole recipe weighs. (So if my pot of soup without the pot weighs 2500g, then 2500 servings!) That way, I can get two bowls of soup, weigh them in grams, and then log the number of grams as the number of servings. This made it WAY easier for me, since I cook a lot and my husband doesn't care about counting calories.
  • allieeveryday
    allieeveryday Posts: 85 Member
    Oh, estherdragonbat beat me to it! Should have read all the comments. :smile:
  • Bowdlerperez
    Bowdlerperez Posts: 2 Member
    @heathersundean146 I agree that it’s time for the app to evolve. The code on the recipe calculator could help you out here. It’s also annoying that you can log any notes with your recipe, so I can’t track how much the servings are (was it 1 cup of chili or 200 grams??), special instructions, optional substitutions, the website, etc. I get it, I can weigh everything, keep detailed in a notebook - but doesn’t that defeat the purpose of the app? I mean - I could track my food, calories, macros, and recipes on paper if I wanted to. Would love to see some upgrades on the app - especially now that we’re all cooking from home so much more.
  • freda666
    freda666 Posts: 338 Member
    edited October 2020
    heathersundean146 wrote: »
    I can't just measure out two cups of soup like a normal person and enter that I ate two cups of soup.

    Cup is not "normal". Normal people use scales. :#
  • BelleRequin
    BelleRequin Posts: 15 Member
    Cup is volume, but surprisingly, not so standardized. Grams is weight. But weight and volume are not interchangeable (except for water when metric). It can’t tell you what 2 cups is worth, because a variety of cooked foods lose moisture or volume. It doesn’t know how long you reduced a soup or sauce. A cup of spinach cooked is a lot less than a cup of spinach raw. A recipe calculator can’t know those things.
  • alanrock823
    alanrock823 Posts: 1 Member
    It would be simplest if it just had a spot for serving size. For example, you make a recipe that serves 10. So it has 10 servings and MFP does the math. Then there is another box where you can put serving size (1 cup, 6 ounces, whatever) MFP would just display it.
    That way you don't have to remember the serving size or put it in the title.
  • galapah
    galapah Posts: 1 Member
    As mentioned a couple of times here, the solution seems to be to indicate the total weight of the finished meal as the number of servings. For someone who logs food in grams, really confusing.

    I eat different amount of a meal every time, which is fine. It is just important to track the total calories per day. With servings, one is more constrained, less flexible (which makes logging demotivating for me).

    The solution from the developer's side would be to:
    * enable creating recipes with two options of measurements (serving as "between how many people will the meal be split" and in grams - one specification would be obligatory, optionally both)
    * while adding the meal, enable the specification in which units you want to log the meal (servings or grams), similarly to unit specification with the ingredients.
  • nalerilune
    nalerilune Posts: 1 Member
    Came here because I have the same issue as the original post. I have a scale and use it. All I want is the ability to note in the recipe, "One serving is 2 tablespoons or 30 grams." It would make the app a lot more convenient and easier to use.

    I use this app to make it more convenient to track calories and nutrition. Memorizing or writing down serving sizes for every recipe I make, and then looking up those serving sizes every time I eat them, is not convenient.

    The best solution I've seen in this thread is to make the recipe's number of servings the weight of the total finished recipe in grams. But that's still a workaround that's more mental overhead than just being able to type in our own serving amounts. I'll probably use it though, so thank you to those who suggested it.

    If I could enter in my own serving amounts, it would make me able to log my recipes the same way I do other foods. I'm able to say that I had "one serving of 56 grams" of a canned food, so why not one serving of 56 grams of my own recipe?

    Sidenote, pretty disappointed at the number of people telling OP she's wrong or "it's not that hard." This is supposed to be a helpful community. Please don't be snarky, and if you don't have anything helpful to add, just click/tap away. Particular side-eye at you, freda.
    freda78 wrote: »
    heathersundean146 wrote: »
    I can't just measure out two cups of soup like a normal person and enter that I ate two cups of soup.

    Cup is not "normal". Normal people use scales. :#

    Let's not shame people for how they measure food, k?
  • Infideluxe
    Infideluxe Posts: 1 Member
    edited June 2021
    Requiring us to contort ourselves into thinking in terms of a completely contrived "Serving" unit is completely asinine.

    Like Heather (who started this thread), I too am wondering "What fool programmed this thing?".

    It's imperative that we be permitted to work in terms of weight when we help ourselves to a completed recipe.

    I always invest the time and effort to measure and record each ingredient.

    So why the <blarg!!!> should I then pretend that my newly cooked pot of Mexican Rice contains 2599 servings in order to circumvent a ridiculous system that I'm actually paying these goofballs 'premium' fees for? (So, I'm a sucker too, rewarding these guys for terrible design.)
  • Agion3
    Agion3 Posts: 15 Member
    Calculate the entire dish, then divide by how many servings you decide to make out of it.
  • nossmf
    nossmf Posts: 11,713 Member
    If you use the servings on a package, make sure you ae aware of what size a "serving" is for that product. It's easy when it's an entire package, but some products promote a "serving" which is ridiculously small compared to what most people would consume. For example, consider the Pillsbury Fudge Brownie. The package advertises it's only 110 calories per serving. Yet a serving is 1/18th of the entire package. In my family we split the cooked product six ways, so my plate actually holds 3 servings, or 330 calories. I make allowance for it in my daily calorie budget, but I have to be aware of the difference between 110 vs 330 based on how many servings I actually consume.
  • rosebarnalice
    rosebarnalice Posts: 3,488 Member
    I often make the total weight the number of servings. A pot of soup that weighs 2234 grams is 2,234 servings.

    I eat 326 grams? I just hast 326 servings.
  • dfwesq
    dfwesq Posts: 592 Member
    If it was soup, I would measure the volume instead of weighing it. Then you can measure your servings by volume and it should work.

    Or, if you're the only one eating the dish and aren't concerned about being precise each day, you can estimate the total number of servings, and log them as you eat them. When you finish the whole dish, go back and adjust the serving sizes in your logs so together they all add up to the correct total.
  • DariusV23
    DariusV23 Posts: 1 Member
    Yes, please sort this feature out. I am new to myfitnesspal app, I have come from Easy Diet Diary which does this feature no worries. Your other features was why I came over, of copying recipes from sites and Friends. As I am not the cook these features are great for who is. But when I am asked how many grams I am going to eat I have to do a convoluted not accurate method. So at the moment I am having to use both apps and check the KJ per grams are correct :( Anyone reackon this will get sorted or do i cancel my sub and look for another app?
  • desplin
    desplin Posts: 2 Member
    edited October 2021
    I agree with a couple of people above. I can easily enter the total number of servings, but I need a way to specify what the serving size is. Just add one more field to the recipe. When you look at the nutrition data for a recipe you created it shows a serving size, but it is always blank--let us fill it in. As a workaround I am entering the serving size in the title, but it would be better if we had the serving size field.
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  • Thelinbc
    Thelinbc Posts: 38 Member
    Put the serving size or weight in the recipe title.
  • SunshineWalk
    SunshineWalk Posts: 8 Member
    rosebarnalice wrote: »
    I often make the total weight the number of servings. A pot of soup that weighs 2234 grams is 2,234 servings.

    I eat 326 grams? I just hast 326 servings.

    Yes! This is what I did, too! To me, this was the most easiest and accurate way. If you are eating rice patties or meatballs and no two are the same weight, no problem. Love the food scales.

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