Counting calories on homemade foods?

Spilogale
Spilogale Posts: 6
in Health and Weight Loss
I am wondering what others do when they eat homemade foods and then try to add them to their diary. My wife and I eat at home basically every night. So with that comes a lot of homemade foods. When I do a search for the food in the database it usually comes up with a brand. Like if I search for "spaghetti" lots of results show up with MANY different calorie counts from many different companies. Well, I know I am not eating at the companies listed so I usually look for the Generic Homemade ones. But even the generic homemade ones in some cases have +/-100 calorie counts.

I have thought "ok I will pick the highest and that way I will never truly go over my calorie intake, but then again calories are important so maybe I should take the one near the average?"

What does everyone else do? I hope I am not the only person that has this problem. Do people really take the time to go through all their ingredients and manually type in the info?

Replies

  • AmyRhubarb
    AmyRhubarb Posts: 6,890 Member
    Use the recipe calculator under the food tab. You enter all the ingredients, just as you would for a basic food, searching in the database. Enter the number of servings, give it a title and click save - it gives all the nutritional info and you can add however many servings you had to your daily diary. It stays in your recipes (handy if it's something you eat often), and you can easily edit with different ingredients if they change, or adjust the number of servings, etc. Works great.
  • silken555
    silken555 Posts: 478 Member
    Your best bet is to use the recipe builder. You can enter how many portions you're making and then enter the whole amount of an ingredient. It'll divide everything for you. It's great.
  • Ignaura
    Ignaura Posts: 203 Member
    You can build your own recipe and scan the barcode of any products you might be using.
    Weight and measure everything for accurate results. I create my own recipes all the time.
  • LessthanKris
    LessthanKris Posts: 607 Member
    I usually add my recipes on my phone so I can scan the barcode of any foods that have them. We menu plan so I usually take 20 minutes or so to add the recipes for the week after I get home from the grocery store. I do not add any herbs or spices though.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    I use the recipe builder
  • SonyaCele
    SonyaCele Posts: 2,841 Member
    my home made meals only consist of three or four ingredients, so its easy. anything more than that, i'll use the recipe builder. i keep everything simple
  • elsyoommen
    elsyoommen Posts: 155 Member
    my home made meals only consist of three or four ingredients, so its easy. anything more than that, i'll use the recipe builder. i keep everything simple

    Yes - I do the same

    however I often redo the recipe when I make a new batch since I have a tendency to change things slightly with each batch depending on what I have in the fridge or how I'm feeling ...
  • Ready2Rock206
    Ready2Rock206 Posts: 9,487 Member
    I love the recipe builder - makes life so much easier!
  • mg720
    mg720 Posts: 212 Member
    You can build your own recipe and scan the barcode of any products you might be using.
    Weight and measure everything for accurate results. I create my own recipes all the time.

    same here :smile:
  • Ely82010
    Ely82010 Posts: 1,998 Member
    Agree! recipe builder if you use more than 3 ingredients, and save it for further use
  • zensugi
    zensugi Posts: 76
    I often use recipes that come with an estimate of the calories or look for something similar in MFP. I figure that there is a lot of approximation, same as with exercise calories and I'm still losing weight, so don't sweat it.
  • tamadrummer001
    tamadrummer001 Posts: 71 Member
    I am wondering what others do when they eat homemade foods and then try to add them to their diary. My wife and I eat at home basically every night. So with that comes a lot of homemade foods. When I do a search for the food in the database it usually comes up with a brand. Like if I search for "spaghetti" lots of results show up with MANY different calorie counts from many different companies. Well, I know I am not eating at the companies listed so I usually look for the Generic Homemade ones. But even the generic homemade ones in some cases have +/-100 calorie counts.

    I have thought "ok I will pick the highest and that way I will never truly go over my calorie intake, but then again calories are important so maybe I should take the one near the average?"

    What does everyone else do? I hope I am not the only person that has this problem. Do people really take the time to go through all their ingredients and manually type in the info?

    Its really easy to do. Go into the recipe section and measure/weigh all your stuff and put it in the ingredients list and let the MFP magicians tell you exactly what you are eating.
  • pixlamarque
    pixlamarque Posts: 312 Member
    I use the recipe builder and I like to weigh the total weight of the finished recipe, usually in ounces, and enter so that one serving is one ounce. That way I can easily vary my serving sizes. So if a dish weighs 46 ounces, that is 46 servings and I can easily have a 4 ounce portion (4 servings) one night and a 6 ounce portion another. We tend to make the same things often so it is a pain the first time, but it's there after that. I do wish that you could more easily edit recipes, though.
  • TheRealParisLove
    TheRealParisLove Posts: 1,907 Member
    I use the recipes tab to add in the ingredients while I'm cooking. I've duplicated the recipe on my husband's profile, too. I have a lot of recipes that sound kind of the same, like pumpkin pancakes and pumpkin protein pancakes to reflect different methods I've used.

    If I'm dining at a friend's house, I will guesstimate and use items already in the database. I use my hand as a guideline with the palm being about 3oz of protein and my fist being about a 1 cup serving.
  • Dougf90
    Dougf90 Posts: 95 Member
    I search each and every ingredient I use. If I'm making spaghetti, I don't do a search for spaghetti. I'll do a search for AND add the pasta, sauce, and raw meat used etc. That in tandem with a food scale and you can never go wrong.
  • lorelei68
    lorelei68 Posts: 30 Member
    If you are using a cookbook recipe, enter the title of the cookbook or website, that you got the recipe from into the database. There are a LOT of Taste of Home (TOH) recipes in there as well as food.com . Also, most good recipes books/sites have the Nutritional values listed. Its easy then to add the complete dish to the database and everyone can use the information. :happy:
  • albertine58
    albertine58 Posts: 267 Member
    Weigh all the ingredients as you add them to your recipe, enter in recipe builder, then weigh entire final recipe (might need to weigh baking dish/container before cooking so you can subtract). I enter the weight of the whole final recipe divided by 100 in the "number of servings" field. So if my entire pan of spaghetti weighed 1352g, I'd enter "13.52 servings". Then when I serve myself, if I take a 123g portion, I'll track it as "1.23 servings."

    You could enter "1352 servings" and not divide by 100, but I think MFP does some rounding of very small fractions so it won't be as accurate- that's why I do the 100g method.

    Sounds like a pain but it takes like 10 seconds per ingredient to weigh. I keep my iPad right on the kitchen counter as I cook to quickly enter. If you're not using a food scale already, GET ONE! When I estimated portions, I did NOT lose consistently and kept giving up out of frustration, for years- until I started measuring like this. Otherwise you truly have no idea how much you're eating.
  • guessrs
    guessrs Posts: 358 Member
    I estimate ...
  • quiltlovinlisa
    quiltlovinlisa Posts: 1,710 Member
    Yes, the recipe calculator is your friend! Takes the guesswork out because you put in all the ingredients, put in the servings and you are set! You can even go in and modify a recipe if you're making something similar with a few changes (say sausage instead of ground beef in your spaghetti sauce)
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 10,091 Member
    Weigh all the ingredients as you add them to your recipe, enter in recipe builder, then weigh entire final recipe (might need to weigh baking dish/container before cooking so you can subtract). I enter the weight of the whole final recipe divided by 100 in the "number of servings" field. So if my entire pan of spaghetti weighed 1352g, I'd enter "13.52 servings". Then when I serve myself, if I take a 123g portion, I'll track it as "1.23 servings."

    You could enter "1352 servings" and not divide by 100, but I think MFP does some rounding of very small fractions so it won't be as accurate- that's why I do the 100g method.

    Sounds like a pain but it takes like 10 seconds per ingredient to weigh. I keep my iPad right on the kitchen counter as I cook to quickly enter. If you're not using a food scale already, GET ONE! When I estimated portions, I did NOT lose consistently and kept giving up out of frustration, for years- until I started measuring like this. Otherwise you truly have no idea how much you're eating.

    This sounds like a good way to not have to remember the serving size for different dishes. What I've been doing after weighing the finished dish and figuring out how many servings I want to divide it into is including the serving size in the name of the dish (because the only way to see the serving size of a "my recipes" food is to go back in to edit the recipe -- it doesn't show up otherwise -- it just says "one serving" where individual foods in the database will say "1 Tbsp" or "1 cup" or "28 grams" etc.). E.g., I'll name a dish "Homemade vegetable broth - salt free (serving = 1 cup = 248 g)" or "Anasazi beans (serving = 115 g)".

    I also think you make a good point about possible rounding errors if you make the serving size too small. Maybe I'll just make each recipe one serving, and include the total weight in the recipe name like I do now, and then I can divide the weight of what I eat at one meal by the total weight of the recipe, and enter that in the quantity field when I add it to my diary. That should minimize the rounding errors.
  • belgd
    belgd Posts: 26 Member
    I enter every ingredient separately. It's time consuming at times but I feel better knowing exactly how many calories I'm eating rather than an estimate that might be too low or high.
    I have to use the food scale and measuring cups/spoons constantly.
  • coolraul07
    coolraul07 Posts: 1,606 Member
    Weigh all the ingredients as you add them to your recipe, enter in recipe builder, then weigh entire final recipe (might need to weigh baking dish/container before cooking so you can subtract). I enter the weight of the whole final recipe divided by 100 in the "number of servings" field. So if my entire pan of spaghetti weighed 1352g, I'd enter "13.52 servings". Then when I serve myself, if I take a 123g portion, I'll track it as "1.23 servings."
    ...
    ^^^
    I have been doing this except for the '100g' part. I've been dividing the recipe by the number of servings that I thought there should be. Trouble being that serving size would vary, even with the same recipe (e.g. 178g this time, 154g the next time, etc.) Makes it a pain when I eat off of something for 2-3 days I have to remember/document the serving size each time.

    I like your '100g' method better and will start doing that from now on. Thanks! :drinker:
  • gaidinsgir1
    gaidinsgir1 Posts: 3 Member
    Weigh all the ingredients as you add them to your recipe, enter in recipe builder, then weigh entire final recipe (might need to weigh baking dish/container before cooking so you can subtract). I enter the weight of the whole final recipe divided by 100 in the "number of servings" field. So if my entire pan of spaghetti weighed 1352g, I'd enter "13.52 servings". Then when I serve myself, if I take a 123g portion, I'll track it as "1.23 servings."

    You could enter "1352 servings" and not divide by 100, but I think MFP does some rounding of very small fractions so it won't be as accurate- that's why I do the 100g method.

    Sounds like a pain but it takes like 10 seconds per ingredient to weigh. I keep my iPad right on the kitchen counter as I cook to quickly enter. If you're not using a food scale already, GET ONE! When I estimated portions, I did NOT lose consistently and kept giving up out of frustration, for years- until I started measuring like this. Otherwise you truly have no idea how much you're eating.

    This is what I do, except I weigh in ounces and whatever the soup or casserole or whatever weighs, I put that number under servings. The whole casserole weighs 211 ounces so I put it in as 211 servings and then I weigh my portion, if it's 5 ounces, I add it to my log as 5 servings.
  • missdibs1
    missdibs1 Posts: 1,092 Member
    I usually add my recipes on my phone so I can scan the barcode of any foods that have them. We menu plan so I usually take 20 minutes or so to add the recipes for the week after I get home from the grocery store. I do not add any herbs or spices though.

    scan bar code? explain?

    Please and thak you

    I bought a scale but that is 1/2 the equation...would love to be able to weigh and scan!
  • Spilogale
    Spilogale Posts: 6
    I usually add my recipes on my phone so I can scan the barcode of any foods that have them. We menu plan so I usually take 20 minutes or so to add the recipes for the week after I get home from the grocery store. I do not add any herbs or spices though.

    scan bar code? explain?

    Please and thak you

    I bought a scale but that is 1/2 the equation...would love to be able to weigh and scan!

    On the mobile app... when you go to add a food to your diary you have the ability to scan in the bar code of your item. Bottom right on the iPhone. Haven't had an item it can't recognize, works great.


    Thank you everyone on else for you comments

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