How do you figure out nutrition facts for handmade food?

sheepysaccount

My parents gave me a couple pieces of home made meat items (pork ham, beef ham, salami). A friend of the family rears the animals, kills them, cuts the meat, and smokes the ham all by himself. How do I figure out the nutrition facts? For now I searched the database and out in a deluxe version of what they have. But I think the industry makes the ham with some different ingredients.

So the question is how many calories, fat, protein, and carbs did I have for lunch today?

AngelaKelly02

You'd have to know all the ingridients and ratios of them...

Ninkyou

You can try going for the USDA entries for meat. Enter USDA and whatever cut & type of meat it is. For example, USDA Top Blade Chuck Beef, or something like that. If you know the kind of cut, the easier it is.

toddis

Ham is just a specific cut of meat isn't it? I'd go with nink on the USDA.

Salami is usually made with ratios I think so you'd have to ask.

sheepysaccount

Okay, thank you.

lynn_glenmont

Unfortunately, even if you know the exact cut of meat, the fat/protein ratios could differ from USDA entries for commercially raised animals (assuming your family friends rely mainly on pasturing during warm months, and then butcher as cold weather sets in). Look to see if USDA has a "grass-fed" entry for the beef. Or look for an MFP entry with lots of user confirmations for a commercial "grass fed" variety.

Even more of a variable, however, is the smoking process, which will reduce the amount of water in the meat, but without actually testing it in a lab, there's no way to know exactly how much. Reducing the amount of water means that the non-water components (proteins, fats, and micronutrients) are more concentrated than in the fresh raw meat, so 2 oz. of smoked meat will have more calories, protein, etc. than 2 oz of fresh raw meat. And even if you compare it to another smoked product, it's difficult to know whether the amount of water lost in smoking is close to the same.

I think going with your best guess from the existing MFP database entries is likely to be as good a guess as you're going to get.

If it's only one or even a few meals, just relax, accept that you've done your best to log what you're eating, and enjoy that wonderful meat, raised, butchered, and smoked by someone you know. You're so lucky!

lynn_glenmont

Unfortunately, even if you know the exact cut of meat, the fat/protein ratios could differ from USDA entries for commercially raised animals (assuming your family friends rely mainly on pasturing during warm months, and then butcher as cold weather sets in). Look to see if USDA has a "grass-fed" entry for the beef. Or look for an MFP entry with lots of user confirmations for a commercial "grass fed" variety.

Even more of a variable, however, is the smoking process, which will reduce the amount of water in the meat, but without actually testing it in a lab, there's no way to know exactly how much. Reducing the amount of water means that the non-water components (proteins, fats, and micronutrients) are more concentrated than in the fresh raw meat, so 2 oz. of smoked meat will have more calories, protein, etc. than 2 oz of fresh raw meat. And even if you compare it to another smoked product, it's difficult to know whether the amount of water lost in smoking is close to the same.

I think going with your best guess from the existing MFP database entries is likely to be as good a guess as you're going to get.

If it's only one or even a few meals, just relax, accept that you've done your best to log what you're eating, and enjoy that wonderful meat, raised, butchered, and smoked by someone you know. You're so lucky!

ETA: Actually, since you know him, you could ask if he's ever weighed the meat before and after smoking to know what percentage of weight is loss in the smoking process. You could assume all that loss is water, do the reverse math to get the original weight of your piece of meat (e.g., if it loses 20% weight during smoking, divide the weight of the smoked meat by 0.2, and then use the USDA entry for that amount of fresh meat for that cut). I wouldn't worry too much about added calories, macro or micro nutrients from things he uses in the smoking process, other than sodium if you're tracking that. If you do track sodium, you could do a quick add of sodium using the amount in a commercial equivalent, which might be an overestimate, but at least it would be something. (Of course, if you're concerned about sodium, smoked meat probably isn't something you should eat a whole lot of.)

sheepysaccount

Okay. That is a lot of work. I'll just go with the user conformed entry. The differences shouldn't be too big and since I stay under my cals mostly, I should be good. There's not much ham left anyway

edit: Oh, and thank you!