Be careful when using other's nutritional info

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amymeenieminymo
amymeenieminymo Posts: 2,394 Member
in Food and Nutrition
I was entering what I plan on having for dinner tonight so I can have some idea how much I have left over for snack. I plan on having homemade tacos, and I saw that someone else had entered nutritional info for a homemade taco with ground beef, lettuce, tomato, and cheese so I used that for my entry rather than trying to calculate myself each of the ingredients. Man was I shocked to see my totals so high. This person had entered one taco with the above ingrediants as being 397 calories and 126 grams of fat. I didn't think that could be right, so I checked taco bells website and one hard shelled taco with the same ingrediants is 170 calories and 10 grams of fat.

So the person that entered that info either had one HUGE taco, or they guestimated way off. I can't imagine any taco with those same ingrediants being worse than taco bell, much less that much worse. So just a helpful hint, be careful when using someone elses nutritional info.

Replies

  • amymeenieminymo
    amymeenieminymo Posts: 2,394 Member
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    I was entering what I plan on having for dinner tonight so I can have some idea how much I have left over for snack. I plan on having homemade tacos, and I saw that someone else had entered nutritional info for a homemade taco with ground beef, lettuce, tomato, and cheese so I used that for my entry rather than trying to calculate myself each of the ingredients. Man was I shocked to see my totals so high. This person had entered one taco with the above ingrediants as being 397 calories and 126 grams of fat. I didn't think that could be right, so I checked taco bells website and one hard shelled taco with the same ingrediants is 170 calories and 10 grams of fat.

    So the person that entered that info either had one HUGE taco, or they guestimated way off. I can't imagine any taco with those same ingrediants being worse than taco bell, much less that much worse. So just a helpful hint, be careful when using someone elses nutritional info.
  • iluvsparkles
    iluvsparkles Posts: 1,730 Member
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    another thing to watch out for when using others nutritional info is that some people only enter the calories and leave the other fields blank. This can get your fat grams and carb counts off, sometimes by a whole lot!
  • Jewlz
    Jewlz Posts: 135
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    YES THIS CAN BE FRUSTRATING. I THINK IF YOU ARE GOING TO ENTER A FOOD INTO THE DATA BASE, YOU SHOULD FILL IN ALL THE NUTRITION INFORMATION. IF YOU DONT HAVE TIME OR YOU ARE ONLY WATCHING CALORIES, JUST SAVE THAT FOOD FOR YOU AND DONT ENTER IT INTO THE DATA BASE. IT CAN BE DECIEVING AND FRUSTRATING FOR THE REST OF US:flowerforyou:
  • iluvsparkles
    iluvsparkles Posts: 1,730 Member
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    ditto! If you are entering for for your own sake, and not putting in accurate information all around, please do not check the box so that others may use it!
  • my2girls0507
    my2girls0507 Posts: 29
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    Yeah I noticed that myself. I'm trying to be really accurate and sometimes what you think is right isn't, so I always double check what they put to the thing I'm entering. If it's wrong I remove it and create another one.
  • timisw
    timisw Posts: 391 Member
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    Maybe not all of the nutritional information, but at least calories, fat, protein and carbs.

    I always make an Excel spreadsheet of the information, total it, and then divide by the number of servings. Its pretty easy to get totals when your adding a can of something or another.

    I also edit things that are totally wrong. For example, with the one you found, 1 g of fat is equal to 9 calories. so having something with 100 g of fat = 900 calories... so definitely cannot be in the ball park!

    Wish there was a checkbox for items that we know are 100% correct or confirmed.

    Also, once they are checked, they could only be changed by only a few people (not everyone).
  • Mike
    Mike Posts: 823 Member
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    One thing you can do is, if you find information that is incorrect, please edit the food and enter in the correct information. Your changes will take effect for everyone that uses that food in the future. That way, everyone will benefit from your catching the error.

    Another thing you can do is, when you click on a food to add it to your diary, we show in small type the number of member confirmations that food has received. If it has received a lot of member confirmations, you can be fairly certain the information is accurate. If it hasn't, you may want to double check the food yourself, and confirm it if it's accurate or edit it if it's not.

    Basically, we need everyone to not only contribute foods to the database, but also to check them for accuracy and correct errors. The more people that do that, the more accurate the database will become for everyone.
  • Mike
    Mike Posts: 823 Member
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    Yeah I noticed that myself. I'm trying to be really accurate and sometimes what you think is right isn't, so I always double check what they put to the thing I'm entering. If it's wrong I remove it and create another one.

    The better thing to do is just edit it. You don't have to remove it and reenter it - it's actually better if you just edit it so that the changes take affect for everyone's future entries.

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