Homemade Foods figuring out calories

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Paganrosemama
Paganrosemama Posts: 86 Member
in Food and Nutrition
I cook a lot, mostly homemade stuff from scratch, and a lot of homegrown veggies that have been canned or frozen at home. We have a lot of favorite dishes, but they are never exactly the same because I use what we have in the house at the time.

I am new here and at the moment just tracking my daily food intake, and not yet making any changes to food, but one homemade meal and I spent just as much time figuring out how much calories, sugars, etc... were in the meal, as cooking it.

How do you determine how many nutrients are in your from scratch meals?

Replies

  • rockingranny45
    rockingranny45 Posts: 30 Member
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    Quite a few homemade items are in the data base. Also i have learned eating home made foods are much healthier than restaurants. I took the time at the beginning to research the calories in a lot of the things i was cooking. Most of the families favs i was able to reduce the sodium and calories just by switching to healthier ingredients. Such as brown rice and whole grain pasta. I switched my family to skim milk and no one noticed :) Good luck on your journey. Once you get the hang of it iam sure it will be a snap since you prepare your meals yourself.
  • imperfect188
    imperfect188 Posts: 25
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    I'm a homemade junkie too. I once made ketchup from scratch! :).

    Under the Food tab there is a section where you can input ingridients and it'll tell you how many calories depending on how many servings.
  • RobinV_Seattle
    RobinV_Seattle Posts: 191 Member
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    If you click on the food tab, then the recipes tab, there's a green box on the right that says "Create Recipe."

    Enter all the ingredients you're starting with and the numbers of portions it's supposed to make and it will figure out calories/nutrients/etc. Save it to your recipes and you'll have it for next time!
  • Paganrosemama
    Paganrosemama Posts: 86 Member
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    Ah the my recipes is much easier to navigate.. I was using the my foods tab, in which took forever, since I had to figure every number out by myself. Thanks!

    As for homemade I grew up with homemade due to our financial circumstances so learned how to cook real foods, and I have never been able to eat convince foods since they never taste the same. I did figure that my two cups of my homemade chilli chowder has less calories, salt, and tasted so much better than the dinky pot pie I had the other day because it was quick and easy, and only had myself to feed.
  • annanderson77985
    annanderson77985 Posts: 57 Member
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    And, you can edit your recipes, if you're like me and never make it quite the same way twice..
  • Grace4DebraAnn
    Grace4DebraAnn Posts: 124 Member
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    MFP has an awesome program where you type in your recipe and it calculates it all out for you. Then when you have it you can go to that tab, select that recipe and log it. I love it! I do a lot of homemade cooking my self. Nothing tastes better then making it from scratch. I have already typed in several of my faves. Then you can tweak it if you change it up every now and then. Just change or at that ingrediant and you are good to go. Welcome to MFP if you are looking for friend you are welcome to add me, I log in daily this website it amazing and you will really enjoy all the kind words of support and encouragement. Have a good night.
  • Grace4DebraAnn
    Grace4DebraAnn Posts: 124 Member
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    I'm a homemade junkie too. I once made ketchup from scratch! :).

    Under the Food tab there is a section where you can input ingridients and it'll tell you how many calories depending on how many servings.

    I've done that too, taste so much better and without all the icky preservatives.
  • bunny1006
    bunny1006 Posts: 325 Member
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    I cook a lot, mostly homemade stuff from scratch, and a lot of homegrown veggies that have been canned or frozen at home. We have a lot of favorite dishes, but they are never exactly the same because I use what we have in the house at the time.

    I am new here and at the moment just tracking my daily food intake, and not yet making any changes to food, but one homemade meal and I spent just as much time figuring out how much calories, sugars, etc... were in the meal, as cooking it.

    How do you determine how many nutrients are in your from scratch meals?

    Thanks for asking about this. I don't cook that much but this is something I've struggled with since joining MFP. Although, as someone else there are a lot of homemade foods in the database. Sometimes they don't exactly match, so it takes a bit of work. I'm interested to see other responses! Thanks again!
  • Ready2Rock206
    Ready2Rock206 Posts: 9,488 Member
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    Make the recipe tab your best friend! And once it is in there it is so easy to modify the next time you make it - just swap out the changed ingredients or click on the ingredient to change the amount. I have several recipes that I have that change a bit each time I make them and having them in the recipe builder makes it so easy!

    I also use the recipe builder for things that aren't really a recipe but I often eat together. Like when making bags of veggies for the week I'll do it as a recipe so I only have to click one button to add it to my diary each day when I eat them. Then the next week if I use different veggies again it is so easy just to swap out what's different.
  • herebeeri
    herebeeri Posts: 39 Member
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    I use the recipe builder and then weigh the final quantity of what I've made and then set the portions so each is 100g. Then I weigh my portion and enter e.g 2.5 portions if I'm having 250g. I always update the recipes when I make the same thing again as often the quantities of ingredients will change a bit and in previous entries MFP always keeps the values that were true when it was logged - it doesn't update to reflect the new entry which works for me!
  • CynthiasChoice
    CynthiasChoice Posts: 1,047 Member
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    If you click on the food tab, then the recipes tab, there's a green box on the right that says "Create Recipe."

    Enter all the ingredients you're starting with and the numbers of portions it's supposed to make and it will figure out calories/nutrients/etc. Save it to your recipes and you'll have it for next time!

    MFP has unfortunately left out a spot to put the serving size. I put it in the title of the recipe: Veggie Soup (1 cup)
    It takes extra time to log when you're creating your own recipes, especially if you're a creative cook that uses what's on hand rather than following a recipe. It also takes time and extra dish washing to measure out your whole recipe after it's cooked.

    I don't think I've ever used my saved MFP recipes over again, but I have been able to save some time by modifying one of my existing recipes to match what I've currently made.

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