Good spaghetti entry on MFP??
sdcooper9
Posts: 18 Member
I'm looking for a good comparison entry on MFP homemade spaghetti which is a pretty common staple in our house so I'd like to be somewhat accurate though certainly doesn't have to be exact!
I'm talking 90/10 beef, spaghetti noodles & regular spaghetti sauce.
As with so many things the options are all over the map on MFP in terms of calories and serving size, I find it easiest to measure by the cup.
Any help much appreciated!!
I'm talking 90/10 beef, spaghetti noodles & regular spaghetti sauce.
As with so many things the options are all over the map on MFP in terms of calories and serving size, I find it easiest to measure by the cup.
Any help much appreciated!!
1
Replies
-
I wouldn't trust the database for something like that, personally. It can vary so much from person to person - what kind of meat are you using, are you adding fat to your sauce, what kind of pasta are you using, are you adding cheese at any point, are you putting any other vegetables in it, what kind of tomatoes, etc, etc. I would just create your own recipe and log that. I'd also strongly recommend getting a food scale, if you aren't using one already, and weighing out both your ingredients and your servings. Once you have the recipe built, it's almost trivial to go in and update it if you make it slightly differently the next time - I know I never make a dish exactly the same way twice, and usually the differences are minor enough not to matter all that much, but I'd rather know that for sure than assume.
For example, I have chili on the stove right now. I weighed out all my ingredients, updated the recipe I had from the last time I made this chili, and when it's done I'll weigh the finished product and figure out serving size from there. Right now my recipe is set to "per 100g" - last time, I made 1550g of chili all told and I had plans to use it in multiple ways (as a dinner main and as components in meal-prepped burritos, which worked amazingly well), so I set it to 155 servings as I wanted to be able to quantify different serving sizes. This time I might reset the servings to 4, since I'm planning to divide all of this chili evenly among 4 containers to have for dinner tonight and tomorrow. Might be 6, we'll see how much it cooks down.5 -
goal06082021 wrote: »I wouldn't trust the database for something like that, personally. It can vary so much from person to person - what kind of meat are you using, are you adding fat to your sauce, what kind of pasta are you using, are you adding cheese at any point, are you putting any other vegetables in it, what kind of tomatoes, etc, etc. I would just create your own recipe and log that. I'd also strongly recommend getting a food scale, if you aren't using one already, and weighing out both your ingredients and your servings. Once you have the recipe built, it's almost trivial to go in and update it if you make it slightly differently the next time - I know I never make a dish exactly the same way twice, and usually the differences are minor enough not to matter all that much, but I'd rather know that for sure than assume.
For example, I have chili on the stove right now. I weighed out all my ingredients, updated the recipe I had from the last time I made this chili, and when it's done I'll weigh the finished product and figure out serving size from there. Right now my recipe is set to "per 100g" - last time, I made 1550g of chili all told and I had plans to use it in multiple ways (as a dinner main and as components in meal-prepped burritos, which worked amazingly well), so I set it to 155 servings as I wanted to be able to quantify different serving sizes. This time I might reset the servings to 4, since I'm planning to divide all of this chili evenly among 4 containers to have for dinner tonight and tomorrow. Might be 6, we'll see how much it cooks down.
I appreciate your reply but I'm just not as dedicated to being precise as you are. Which is why I came here to ask for a recommendation for an entry that may be somewhat close0 -
What is regular spaghetti sauce? How much do you use? How much noodles do you use? Do you drain the fat from the meat?
More info will help with selecting any random entry.
5 -
How many servings do you make from a box of spaghetti (16 oz) or give us the size if different? I would make 8 servings, but my sis would only make 4, so that's pretty important.
Same with a jar of sauce. How many servings per jar? I think most jars are 24 oz, but some are smaller or larger.
And how much beef per serving? 1 lb for 4 servings? Or something else?3 -
WeatherJane wrote: »What is regular spaghetti sauce? How much do you use? How much noodles do you use? Do you drain the fat from the meat?
More info will help with selecting any random entry.
Right...all of this, plus how much meat do you cook with it? I think it's going to be hard for someone here to give a recommendation when we have no idea how much of each ingredient you use, what type of sauce (some pasta sauces can be 45 calories per serving, and others can be 150 + calories!) and how big your portions are.
It would really make more sense to put each item in individually, at the very least (meat, specific brand of sauce, noodles, plus any oils or cheeses..).3 -
goal06082021 wrote: »I wouldn't trust the database for something like that, personally. It can vary so much from person to person - what kind of meat are you using, are you adding fat to your sauce, what kind of pasta are you using, are you adding cheese at any point, are you putting any other vegetables in it, what kind of tomatoes, etc, etc. I would just create your own recipe and log that. I'd also strongly recommend getting a food scale, if you aren't using one already, and weighing out both your ingredients and your servings. Once you have the recipe built, it's almost trivial to go in and update it if you make it slightly differently the next time - I know I never make a dish exactly the same way twice, and usually the differences are minor enough not to matter all that much, but I'd rather know that for sure than assume.
For example, I have chili on the stove right now. I weighed out all my ingredients, updated the recipe I had from the last time I made this chili, and when it's done I'll weigh the finished product and figure out serving size from there. Right now my recipe is set to "per 100g" - last time, I made 1550g of chili all told and I had plans to use it in multiple ways (as a dinner main and as components in meal-prepped burritos, which worked amazingly well), so I set it to 155 servings as I wanted to be able to quantify different serving sizes. This time I might reset the servings to 4, since I'm planning to divide all of this chili evenly among 4 containers to have for dinner tonight and tomorrow. Might be 6, we'll see how much it cooks down.
I appreciate your reply but I'm just not as dedicated to being precise as you are. Which is why I came here to ask for a recommendation for an entry that may be somewhat close
Close to what, if we have no idea how much pasta you're cooking, how much meat, how much sauce, what's in it, or any additional ingredients?
I don't want to discourage you, I promise, but if you have no intention to being precise, then maybe you're not going to get great results with MFP. I'd strongly recommend you to read the Most Helpful Posts in each section, so that you can learn how MFP works. And also to buy a kitchen scale, so that you can be precise without much hassle - I assure you it's easier than it seems once you get the hang of it.
Best of luck to you!8 -
If it's a staple in your house, it's probably worth taking the time to build the recipe for it :-)17
-
Whenever I eat out, I use the entry: Restaurant, Italian, spaghetti with meat sauce.1
-
If you make it with the same ingredients every time, measure each ingredient separately and find the individual items entries just once and either create a recipe or your own dish entry. Once it's in there, you just need to concern yourself with serving size.
As someone else said, you can always look for a known restaurant entry for the dish. But i would only do that if it's something you didn't have often. Depending on the ratio of pasta to beef to sauce, and how much fat or sugar is used in your sauce, and how much fat you drain off your beef, an estimate could easily be off by hundreds of calories.
Logging accurately can seem like a huge project in the beginning, but for many of us it gets easier and quicker over time. And if you're going to put any effort into accuracy, your staple meals is definitely the most important place to do it. Once you build up your favorites and recents lists, there's little searching, just measuring.8 -
darreneatschicken wrote: »Whenever I eat out, I use the entry: Restaurant, Italian, spaghetti with meat sauce.
Thank you for actually having an answer!0 -
Thank you all for your detailed responses. This question accounts for 2-3 meals out of at least 90 that I eat in a given month. Which is why I'm not going to the lengths of getting a food scale.
I had thought that other people on this website might eat spaghetti as well from time to time and might be willing to share with me what they log on MFP when they eat spaghetti.
As I said in my original post it is three ingredients:
1lb of 90/10 beef bought from Kroger
Larosa's brand original pasta sauce (24oz)
Creamette brand enriched spaghetti noodles (16oz)
Yes the fat is drained..... I don't know how many servings are made because my wife cooks each of the items and we serve ourselvs... For me I'd estimate probably approximately 2 cups0 -
Thank you all for your detailed responses. This question accounts for 2-3 meals out of at least 90 that I eat in a given month. Which is why I'm not going to the lengths of getting a food scale.
I had thought that other people on this website might eat spaghetti as well from time to time and might be willing to share with me what they log on MFP when they eat spaghetti.
As I said in my original post it is three ingredients:
1lb of 90/10 beef bought from Kroger
Larosa's brand original pasta sauce (24oz)
Creamette brand enriched spaghetti noodles (16oz)
Yes the fat is drained..... I don't know how many servings are made because my wife cooks each of the items and we serve ourselvs... For me I'd estimate probably approximately 2 cups
If you're not going to get a food scale, you're not going to know how much you're eating, even if you luckily end up selecting an entry that matches your wife's recipe. The percentage of people who can accurately estimate food by volume is very low, and even if you use a measuring cup, how do you know how tightly packed a "cup" of spaghetti is supposed to be? There's a reason packaged food is generally sold by weight, not by volume.
I sincerely wish you luck, but the threads on MFP are full of people asking why they're not losing weight who, it turns out, aren't using scales and aren't using database entries that accurately reflect what they're eating.13 -
I found the entry for the Barilla pasta I use and weighed out the number of dry servings on the scale. Then I found the entry for the jarred sauce I use and weighed out the amount I like to use. I don't typically cooked ground beef, but if I wanted to add some leftover chicken, I would find an entry for roasted chicken that matches the USDA published entry and weigh that out as well.
Once they are logged once, I can find them in my Recent list and just update or match the serving size to log it again in the future.
I don't typically make food at home that replicates restaurant food, so I would never log a restaurant meal for a home cooked meal as I doubt it would be anywhere near accurate.
Considering you have 3 brand name ingredients, I guess I'm just confused why you don't just find those 3 entries and log them? It's just going from one entry to three.10 -
In the time it took you to ask the question and respond to the posts, you could have put all the ingredients into recipe builder and voila - your answer. That's how I do it, and once it's built in recipe builder it's there or if you switch stuff up significantly you can edit the recipe in about 20 seconds. FWIW, I don't "drain the fat" because whatever you think you're draining, the liquid is going to be mostly juice and not fat from the beef. My last recipe entry for meat sauce was
3 cloves garlic
28.00 oz, Whole Peeled Tomatoes (that's one large can of San Marzano-type tomatoes)
2 tablespoon, Oil - Olive
6 ounce, Onion
5 ounces, Pinot Grigio
12 oz, Ground Beef 96/4
I didn't bother to list herbs because they have very few calories and I don't measure them.
That entire recipe comes to ~1050 calories. I have weighed pasta so much I can pretty well eyeball a serving at 200 calories. Then there's the parmesan I add - 50 calories at the most grated (yes, I measure). SO, for me, a "spaghetti dinner" would come to around 450-500 calories.8 -
I found the entry for the Barilla pasta I use and weighed out the number of dry servings on the scale. Then I found the entry for the jarred sauce I use and weighed out the amount I like to use. I don't typically cooked ground beef, but if I wanted to add some leftover chicken, I would find an entry for roasted chicken that matches the USDA published entry and weigh that out as well.
Once they are logged once, I can find them in my Recent list and just update or match the serving size to log it again in the future.
I don't typically make food at home that replicates restaurant food, so I would never log a restaurant meal for a home cooked meal as I doubt it would be anywhere near accurate.
Considering you have 3 brand name ingredients, I guess I'm just confused why you don't just find those 3 entries and log them? It's just going from one entry to three.
This, or once you have them all logged, I think there is still an option to Create A Meal. Then you can just select that meal each time you make it, and it will put all of the entries in for you without having to look at your recents.
ETA: I just looked, it's actually "Save Meal"5 -
Without a food scale you will never get the counting right. Might as well go back to WW.11
-
Whilst I don’t think it’s necessary at all to carefully measure and weigh your intake in order lose/maintain/gain I do think if your going to use MFP you should try and a bit more precise or your not using the app the way it’s intended and probably not going to get results. I feel if it’s too much effort for you to accurately track why even use the app? Why not just reduce your portion sizes of what you currently eat? (If weight loss is the goal)10
-
Thank you all for your detailed responses. This question accounts for 2-3 meals out of at least 90 that I eat in a given month. Which is why I'm not going to the lengths of getting a food scale.
I had thought that other people on this website might eat spaghetti as well from time to time and might be willing to share with me what they log on MFP when they eat spaghetti.
As I said in my original post it is three ingredients:
1lb of 90/10 beef bought from Kroger
Larosa's brand original pasta sauce (24oz)
Creamette brand enriched spaghetti noodles (16oz)
Yes the fat is drained..... I don't know how many servings are made because my wife cooks each of the items and we serve ourselvs... For me I'd estimate probably approximately 2 cups
we do eat spaghetti (well many us do). its not hard to calculate spaghetti. especially with only those 3 ingredients. if you don't want to bother doing it correctly, then why bother asking us? find any random entry and use that.10 -
I'm looking for a good comparison entry on MFP homemade spaghetti which is a pretty common staple in our house so I'd like to be somewhat accurate though certainly doesn't have to be exact!
I'm talking 90/10 beef, spaghetti noodles & regular spaghetti sauce.
As with so many things the options are all over the map on MFP in terms of calories and serving size, I find it easiest to measure by the cup.
Any help much appreciated!!
Use the recipe builder. Any entry in the database for "spaghetti" is just going to be some other users recipe which may or may not be anything close to your recipe. People use different ingredients...more or less oil...more or less meat, etc.
Really, it comes down to how accurate you want to be with things. I've used those kind of entries in the database when lazy logging without much issue...but I also have a reasonably high TDEE and have a good bit of wiggle room in my calorie targets for losing weight. YMMV...any entry for "spaghetti" from the database is just going to be a shot in the dark as you really have no idea what went into it.4 -
goal06082021 wrote: »I wouldn't trust the database for something like that, personally. It can vary so much from person to person - what kind of meat are you using, are you adding fat to your sauce, what kind of pasta are you using, are you adding cheese at any point, are you putting any other vegetables in it, what kind of tomatoes, etc, etc. I would just create your own recipe and log that. I'd also strongly recommend getting a food scale, if you aren't using one already, and weighing out both your ingredients and your servings. Once you have the recipe built, it's almost trivial to go in and update it if you make it slightly differently the next time - I know I never make a dish exactly the same way twice, and usually the differences are minor enough not to matter all that much, but I'd rather know that for sure than assume.
For example, I have chili on the stove right now. I weighed out all my ingredients, updated the recipe I had from the last time I made this chili, and when it's done I'll weigh the finished product and figure out serving size from there. Right now my recipe is set to "per 100g" - last time, I made 1550g of chili all told and I had plans to use it in multiple ways (as a dinner main and as components in meal-prepped burritos, which worked amazingly well), so I set it to 155 servings as I wanted to be able to quantify different serving sizes. This time I might reset the servings to 4, since I'm planning to divide all of this chili evenly among 4 containers to have for dinner tonight and tomorrow. Might be 6, we'll see how much it cooks down.
I appreciate your reply but I'm just not as dedicated to being precise as you are. Which is why I came here to ask for a recommendation for an entry that may be somewhat close
Without answers to those questions, nobody can tell you what will be "somewhat close."
We have no idea how you make your spaghetti. Even if we did, we have no idea how the person who originally created the generic/homemade database entries made THEIR spaghetti. So we're just throwing an invisible dart at an invisible dartboard.8
Categories
- All Categories
- 1.4M Health, Wellness and Goals
- 391.2K Introduce Yourself
- 43.4K Getting Started
- 259.7K Health and Weight Loss
- 175.6K Food and Nutrition
- 47.3K Recipes
- 232.3K Fitness and Exercise
- 386 Sleep, Mindfulness and Overall Wellness
- 6.4K Goal: Maintaining Weight
- 8.5K Goal: Gaining Weight and Body Building
- 152.7K Motivation and Support
- 7.8K Challenges
- 1.3K Debate Club
- 96.4K Chit-Chat
- 2.5K Fun and Games
- 3.2K MyFitnessPal Information
- 22 News and Announcements
- 895 Feature Suggestions and Ideas
- 2.2K MyFitnessPal Tech Support Questions