"Homemade" or "Generic" listings in dbase

jeffyglenn
jeffyglenn Posts: 2 Member
in Recipes
Hi All,
I LOVE myfitnesspal almost 100%!
OK, I probably shouldn't be eating fried chicken, but I'd like to use it as an example here.
When adding food to my daily diary, if I enter "fried chicken", many options for grocery store and restaurant branded items appear along with several options listed as "homemade" or "generic". None of the "homemade" or "generic" items give any indication as to the contents of the recipe, so how do we know what we're adding to our diary? A few kind fellow users have stated "made with flour" on their recipe titles.
Assuming that we're making and eating eating our own homamade fried chicken, is there any way we can look at the recipes/ingredients of the already created recipes so we can make the best choice to match ours? Otherwise, we have to create all new recipes for everything we make. Knowing what's in the listings would be really helpful. The "generic" or "homemade" listings are really a guess or "shot in the dark" unless the person who entered it uses it or we "at large" users have access to the ingredients and methods used in creating the dishes.
Help!
Jeff G. Chicago

Replies

  • ckish
    ckish Posts: 341 Member
    What a great idea! :drinker:
  • Johanne1957
    Johanne1957 Posts: 167 Member
    Yes, that's a great idea...I am creating recipes for everything because I don't know what the ingredients are and if they are correctly counted and all listed and etc etc...

    I would love to be able to see the ingredients...more of us could rely on those thousands of entries and shortening some of our work...I spend a lot of time on here doing all this logging!!!...

    Thanks for thinking of that!
  • IslandDreamer64
    IslandDreamer64 Posts: 258 Member
    I have made several recipes for things that I make often--meatloaf, peach cobbler, a few other treats (I do a LOT of baking!). It's time consuming to do, but worth it to know you're tracking correctly.
  • AleciaG724
    AleciaG724 Posts: 705 Member
    Yes, I make new recipes all the time. But to save time, I will sometimes go to a site that I know posts nutritional content - like Allrecipes.com - & find one that is closest to what I made at home. Then I look at the calories for each of the Homemade/Generic/Restaurant/whatever listings & pick the closest one. Whether it's my own creation, or a recipe without the nutrients calculated, I feel that I can get somewhat close with this method.
  • jeffyglenn
    jeffyglenn Posts: 2 Member
    Good idea! Thanks!
  • stefjc
    stefjc Posts: 484 Member
    You can make recipes here - I made one a couple of days ago. I thought the only reason I could only see that one was because I had missed something.

    Has anyone else added a recipe?
  • geralynhoerauf
    geralynhoerauf Posts: 73 Member
    Here's another way to track your own homemade foods...

    Enter your ingredients list in http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/recipe_analysis.php and calculate the complete macros count. Then just enter the totals under My Foods instead of recreating everything in My Recipes. I find the ability to cut-and-paste the ingredients list in the Recipe Analysis much faster than on MFP.
  • dvelocity
    dvelocity Posts: 309 Member
    Here's another way to track your own homemade foods...

    Enter your ingredients list in http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/recipe_analysis.php and calculate the complete macros count. Then just enter the totals under My Foods instead of recreating everything in My Recipes. I find the ability to cut-and-paste the ingredients list in the Recipe Analysis much faster than on MFP.

    Just tried that site recipe calcuator and that is a great tool to have!
  • BernadetteChurch
    BernadetteChurch Posts: 2,210 Member
    I personally think "generic" and "homemade" listings should just be banned from the database. Like the OP says, no one else has any way of knowing what ingredients or quantities are involved so the database entry has no value to anyone except the person who added it.

    I save my foods as either recipes or meals, so I know the nutritional info is accurate. It's a bit of a pain I admit, but once they're in there you can easily tweak the quantities in meals. Recipes are slightly more difficult to adjust, which is annoying, but I'd still rather calculate the calories for myself.
  • grassette
    grassette Posts: 976 Member
    bump, to read later.
  • WendyTerry420
    WendyTerry420 Posts: 13,274 Member
    For the oil, I always measure the oil that I put in the pan, then measure it again after cooking and subtract the difference.
  • ShannonMpls
    ShannonMpls Posts: 1,936 Member
    I personally think "generic" and "homemade" listings should just be banned from the database. Like the OP says, no one else has any way of knowing what ingredients or quantities are involved so the database entry has no value to anyone except the person who added it.

    I find it quite useful. If I go to a friend's house for dinner and she makes chicken pad thai, I will search the database for a homemade chicken pad thai to add to my diary so I can estimate. I'm certainly not going to ask my friend to keep track of each ingredient used and its quantity to create a recipe in MFP, so the generic entries have quite a bit of value in those circumstances.
  • wizzyocean
    wizzyocean Posts: 12 Member
    bump
  • lngman
    lngman Posts: 23 Member
    I have the same problem trying to decide what to enter when I eat at a local restraunt or at someone's house. I tend to be conservative and over-estimate. I will typically try to find a similar dish from a mainstream place that's not particularly healthy (like Applebees or Red Robin) and enter those values. I'd rather over-estimate my calories and be pleasantly surprised at the scale than the other way around.

    I personally don't want to turn MFP into a daily science project, or I won't keep doing it....but I totally get that some people want to be more accurate.

    At this point in my journey, I am also focussing mainly on calories, although I do look at the other macros. For people that are more finely tuned than me, knowing more recipe info is probably more important.

    Enjoy the journey!
  • Kreider86
    Kreider86 Posts: 105 Member
    bump
  • joyce0624
    joyce0624 Posts: 115 Member
    Bump for later
  • sunysum1302
    sunysum1302 Posts: 2 Member
    While that would be a very handy tool indeed, it's probably not going to happen unless each and every one of us enter our homemade recipes. Even then, do we all know exactly how many calories, carbs, etc. are in each and every dish we create? Who has that kind of time? The point, I think, is to try to account for your meals and sometimes just putting it on here helps you be more aware of what you are putting into your body. I would say that if you choose "homemade fried chicken" it's as close as you can get when cooking from scratch vs. reading a box. Good luck! :smile:

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