How to ... add home made meals

johnpsotajenkins
johnpsotajenkins Posts: 1 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Hi all.
So I'm new to myfitnesspal and I want to add meals to the app. Instead of adding each ingredients individually is there a way to create a meal by adding the ingredients into one meal title?

Answers

  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,760 Member
    edited January 1
    That's kind of what the Meals or Recipe features do.

    In either of those, you enter all the ingredients, then you can log them with one selection rather than typing in every ingredient every time. If you only ate part of whatever it is, in either case you can use a fraction in the number of servings to reflect that. Using the fractional number of servings logs just that part of the calories and nutrients, so if say you log 0.25 servings, you get one quarter of the dish's total calories, protein, etc., in your daily diary totals.

    The main difference is that when you log a recipe, what appears in your diary is just one line, like maybe "John's Meat Lasagna" rather than a list that includes lasagna noodles, meat, tomato sauce, etc.

    By contrast, when you log a meal, MFP copies in each of the ingredient line items, so they all appear in your diary as individual line items for the day. For example, if you log a meal you've called "John's Ham Sandwich", what might appear in your diary is 2 slices of whole wheat bread, mustard, onions, ham, cheese, etc.

    Generally, if you have something you make the same way every time, the Recipes option is good. If you have a sort of a pattern you repeat, but details vary, Recipes may be better. For example, with that ham sandwich example, you might have a day where you use mayo instead of mustard, or have a different amount of cheese. With the Recipe option, the line items are in your diary individually, so you can delete the mustard, add the mayo as a separate food line, and change the quantity of ham, all right on your diary page.

    I admit, some people prefer to use Meals in all cases, never Recipes. I don't know why they prefer that; they'll have to tell you. ;)

    I hope that makes sense.

    ETA links to the most relevant Help documents:

    https://support.myfitnesspal.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032625331-Meal-Creation-FAQ
    https://support.myfitnesspal.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032271452-How-do-I-create-a-recipe-Original-Recipe-Tool-Non-English-versions-of-the-site

    There are other help docs there, but those seem the closest to what you're asking. You can find the whole list of food related docs here:

    https://support.myfitnesspal.com/hc/en-us/sections/360006073671-FOOD-DIARY-AND-FOOD-DATABASE

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