Food Portion Sizes

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kh1205
kh1205 Posts: 2
in Health and Weight Loss
I'm new to the site and confused about the portion sizes. For lunch I entered that I had penne with chicken. When the portion size came up, it stated "pot" and that there were "4 pots per container." I'm not sure what to put in for the portion size with this type of serving size?? Help!!

Replies

  • jzaz903
    jzaz903 Posts: 306 Member
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    is it something you made yourself?
    if so, enter everything in separately. whoever put that "penne with chicken" into the database was not you, and made theirs differently.

    you could also try using the recipe builder, and entering in what all you put in it and then how many it serves.
  • Gramps251
    Gramps251 Posts: 738 Member
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    Some dishes or foods are labled with portion sizes that don't mean much. Example how big is one "large" sweet potato? When I get these I look for another source of nutritional information like usda or directly from the company that makes the product. If I make it myself I have to put together a recipe or build an entry in MyFoods.

    Good luck.
  • quiltingducky
    quiltingducky Posts: 103 Member
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    I agree. I usually put my own ingredients into the recipe builder and go from there, unless it is something at a restaurant, which happens to have nutritional values on a handout or on the web, then I go by what they say. You can't just pick something out of the database on here and go by that, unless there are no other options, because you have no idea how that individual cooked the meal.
  • GauchoMark
    GauchoMark Posts: 1,804 Member
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    pick a different item from the database. That one is obviously something that someone manually entered, so it has about a 50% chance of being wrong anyways!

    Here is a tip - if you are using the desktop version of MFP (not droid or iphone) the database items that have a * before the name were manually entered. These are not always accurate and you need to do sanity checks on them. Look at the confirmations and try to pick one that has a lot and is in the measurement type (cups, ounces, grams) that you need.
  • kh1205
    kh1205 Posts: 2
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    Y'all are GREAT! Thank you so much!!
  • keenesmom
    keenesmom Posts: 115 Member
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    I too enter all my food separately or use the barcode scanner on my iPhone. If you ate at a restaurant then you can look up the dish online. Most chain restaurants have their nutritional information online these days. As for weights, I purchased a food scale ($30) and use that religiously at home. There is also several other website (CalorieKing.com being one of them) that you can search and double check information.
  • Forensic
    Forensic Posts: 468 Member
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    If I don't understand the measurement someone entered for portions I use a different one, there are plenty, :)
  • elizak87
    elizak87 Posts: 249 Member
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    The best thing to do is purchase a food scale and use that to measure out your portions. I do this for pretty much everything like if I buy a huge thing of goldfish crackers I separate them out into individual bags for each portion size. Once you've done your measurement, find a different food in the database that lists it by weight and use that one instead of the "1/4 pot" or whatever one

    I do this too with all my snacks and meals. My fridge and cupboard are tupperware crazy. I find it stops me under estimating a serve. Especially with things like dip. One serve looks so tiny!

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