Nutrition Stats in MFP Correct?

dsnuge

just started my premium membership today. First meal logged was very simple...one roma tomato and one small hass avocado. MFP reflects 12 net carbs for this meal which is not correct. Roma tomato has about 1.7 and the avocado has about 3 from all I have researched. Anyone else having issues with food stats being correct? I also notice MFP reflected the roma tomato as 35 calories which is about double what I think is correct.

lemurcat2

You need to make sure you pick accurate entries. For whole foods, learning to find the USDA entries or comparing them with the USDA entries can be helpful at first.

I'd also use weights, ideally, not "small" especially for something like an avocado.

USDA has 62 g of tomato (it estimates 62 g for a typical plum tomato) as 11 cals, about 1.7 g net carbs.
It also has 100 g of avocado, California (which would be small for most avocados, although I've seen tinier ones) at 167 cals and about 2 g net carbs.

These entries will be in MFP -- they tend to look like "tomatoes, red, all varieties, raw" or "avocados, raw, California" and have lots of size options.

janejellyroll

The database entries were mostly added by your fellow users. Some of them are very accurate, some are less accurate, some are terrible. You will want to double-check your entries for accuracy, especially if they are ones that you use often.

There's also the additional issue of what a "small" avocado is -- what you think of as small may actually be what someone else thinks of as medium. For this reason, you may want to consider weighing food if accuracy is a concern -- especially for calorie-dense items like avocados.

kshama2001

Another vote for using a food scale. I was always stressing about how tightly to pack a cup and exactly what "small" medium" etc meant.

Unfortunately, the green check marks in the MFP database are used for both USER-created entries and ADMIN-created entries that MFP pulled from the USDA database. A green check mark for USER-created entries just means enough people have upvoted the entry - it is not necessarily correct.

To find ADMIN entries for whole foods, I get the syntax from the USDA database and paste that into MFP.

https://fdc.nal.usda.gov

The USDA changed the platform for their database in 2019 and it is unfortunately a little more difficult to use. I uncheck everything but “SR Legacy” - that seems to be what MFP used to pull in entries.

dsnuge

thank you all for your help...very helpful! Next question is how to get my net carbs showing on my computer or is it only possibly on the mobile app? I was able to update mobile app settings to see it there.

wilson10102018

The database is a total mess. MFP won't bother to remove the entries no one uses because they are too stupid for almost everyone to choose. We select the correct ones and use them. All MFP would have to do is delete the least used 10% every year and the database would be much better.

Lietchi

wilson10102018 wrote: »

The database is a total mess. MFP won't bother to remove the entries no one uses because they are too stupid for almost everyone to choose. We select the correct ones and use them. All MFP would have to do is delete the least used 10% every year and the database would be much better.

Except entries for small countries/countries with fewer users on MFP would also risk getting deleted. I already have a hard enough time finding entries, I'd rather not see the ones I can find deleted 😉
(But yeah, a cleanup of bad ones would be good)

Luke_rabbit

wilson10102018 wrote: »

The database is a total mess. MFP won't bother to remove the entries no one uses because they are too stupid for almost everyone to choose. We select the correct ones and use them. All MFP would have to do is delete the least used 10% every year and the database would be much better.

It would probably be better to let users vote that an entry is incorrect and then delete that way (after it gets a certain number of incorrect votes).

lemurcat2

The problem would be for packaged goods which are going to be different in different places. It could work for whole foods, but even there you are going to have a different "carb" number depending on whether the person who put it in is in the US/Canada (where "carbs" includes fiber) or one of the many other countries where it does not.

Unfortunately I don't know the answer to the question about whether net carbs is only on the mobile app currently. (I believe it's only a premium feature.)