How do I know which food should I click on?

marcusbaleactor

hi, I am finding hard to count the calories I eat each day, for example if I have a plate of pasta bolognese and I log in “pasta bolognese” in my fitness app, there are like 59 different options for pasta bolognese with a huge difference in calories! How do I know which to choose?

Lietchi

You are better off avoiding generic entries like that, you have no idea what recipe they used.

Better: log the ingredients you used to make the pasta and sauce.

Alatariel75

This ^^

Entries like "pasta bolognaise" are basically useless. For accuracy, you need to log the ingredients in the amounts that you consumed. There's a recipe builder for creating the bolognaise recipe, if that helps.

WestCoastGirl_1

I agree with @Lietchi and @Alatariel75. I don't know if you have to be a premium member or not, but I go to recipes and add each individual ingredient. After you save it, it will be there and you can just add it to your meal by "Add Food" and go to "Recipes". It takes a little time at first. If you eat the same meals a lot of the time, you can also remember your meals and again go to "Add Food" and "Meals" and enter them in one click.

kanavharwani1

You should rather focus on eating whole foods. It's simply better for your body and easy to track. Don't eat things with too many ingredients or processed foods

Strudders67

If you cooked it yourself, build a recipe. I do a lot of bulk cooking and freeze multiple portions at a time; I have pages of saved recipes in MFP so that I can just select 1 portion of x when I next eat that particular dish. If you bought a ready-prepared meal, find that brand / the entry with the nutrition info that matches the packaging (there may be multiple iterations as products change and older versions are still in the database). If you ate in a restaurant, all you can do is select what you 'think' is the best option.

AnnPT77

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48789784#Comment_48789784

Pasta bolognese has a sauce usually made of ground meat, vegetables (onions, carrots, and celery), garlic, tomatoes, red or white wine, milk, olive oil or butter, and seasonings like salt, pepper, and herbs, maybe served with Parmesan cheese. 

Just because a recipe has multiple ingredients, that doesn't make it bad for us. Most of those things I'd count as whole foods, and combining them doesn't make them non-whole. Yes, some of those ingredients and the pasta are processed, but they're things humans have been eating for many centuries and living at least long enough to reproduce. Ironically, it's a recipe from the Mediterranean region, and the traditional Mediterranean diet is generally considered health-promoting.

If pasta bolognese fits in someone's calories, it sounds to me like a fairly well-rounded meal with some good nutrition.

Calorie counting a longer list of foods takes a little more time than calorie counting a short list, but eating the short list can be more boring/bland. It's a personal tradeoff, not inherently some kind of health hazard.

rms62003

Agree, don't click on basically the recipe entries for the most part. For the things I make a lot, I'll make my own recipes (I always make sure to click 'no' on putting it in the MFP database. This way it doesn't show for others and clutter the database. )

For things that are a sometimes, I'll list the ingredients the best I can. Some of my meals can be pretty long! For this, I have gone out on Google and fact checked the nutrition given for the ingredient. Even for those that have the green check, supposedly fact checked by MFP, you will see varying numbers.

No matter what you do, you will still be estimating unless you are doing the strict scale weights, etc. I think estimating is fine, as long as you are being as accurate as possible. I actually try NOT to eat up to calorie goal so I can give a little estimation wiggle room. I'm happy if I have 100 calories left in my day - and has worked well for me.