Serving size for a recipe - please help!!

BowieBaby
BowieBaby Posts: 25 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Hi all,

I am new to MFP and am having a bit of trouble...

I recently added a recipe (Mexican Beans) - it involves two tins of diced tomatoes and two tins of kidney beans (plus garlic, onion, spice). How do I know how many people it serves? Do I go by what the tins say (the tinned tomatoes say 2 servings, the beans 4 servings)? Or do I measure it another way?

I hope this make sense - I am confusing myself with all this!

Thank you!

Replies

  • mforsis
    mforsis Posts: 41
    Curiously, I have recommended this site on MFP twice today.

    http://www.webmd.com/diet/healthtool-portion-size-plate

    It doesn't give visuals for either tinned tomatoes or kidney beans but I searched the google and got portion sizes of 1 c for each - so I am guessing about the size of a baseball (using the visuals for mixed vegetables on this site.

    That was news to me. And a bit depressing as I love my vegetables. Hope it helps
  • BowieBaby
    BowieBaby Posts: 25 Member
    Thanks! Yep, a baseball seems right - my dish looks very like the chilli picture in that guide.

    So I need to then figure out how many 'baseballs' are in my dish, then that is the number of people it serves?

    Thanks so much for your help!
  • katorihanzo
    katorihanzo Posts: 234 Member
    If I were you I'd make the recipe, eat it in regular-sized portions (a medium sized plate/bowl, enough to satisfy you, not over-stuff you) and then see how many portions you get over it. I use the MFP thing all the time and unless I do this I never really know how many portions it is. Unless it's something like soup where you can measure 1 or 2 cup servings and count it that way.
  • BowieBaby
    BowieBaby Posts: 25 Member
    Yeah, I wondered about doing it this way - thank you!
  • hananah89
    hananah89 Posts: 692 Member
    when I do things like this I usually split the recipe up into servings based on either the main ingredient (i.e. 4oz of chicken is a serving, so 16oz would be 4 servings) or if I did something with lots of servings like in the crock pot, I take a reasonable first portion, then split up the rest into containers. Then I make sure they are all about even and use that as the number of servings. I also play around before I even make some recipes to see how many calories I can allow myself and that's how many servings I'll end up getting if that makes sense.
  • socajam
    socajam Posts: 2,530 Member
    Hi all,

    I am new to MFP and am having a bit of trouble...

    I recently added a recipe (Mexican Beans) - it involves two tins of diced tomatoes and two tins of kidney beans (plus garlic, onion, spice). How do I know how many people it serves? Do I go by what the tins say (the tinned tomatoes say 2 servings, the beans 4 servings)? Or do I measure it another way?

    I hope this make sense - I am confusing myself with all this!

    Thank you!

    How about making it simple: use 1 cup as a serving size, that what I do.
  • BowieBaby
    BowieBaby Posts: 25 Member
    Thanks so much for all your help - this is making more sense now. I have never really bothered to think about serving sizes before, so it's all new.

    I thought about doing the one cup thing as well - makes it easy for sure!
  • echofm1
    echofm1 Posts: 471 Member
    Serving size is a relative term, even in the food industry. Seriously, read this: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/01/this_pint_of_ben_jerrys_is_four_servings.html

    On that note, it's your recipe. You can adjust it how you like, based on how many calories it is and how much you think is going to fill you up. Don't worry so much about what a serving size is of the ingredients, since those all add up. I don't put more than 4 servings worth of any ingredient into a pot of chili, but I get 6 bowls of chili out of a pot. So that's what I use as my serving size. Just cut it down until you get it to a calorie level and amount of food that works for your diet, and log it.
  • BowieBaby
    BowieBaby Posts: 25 Member
    Serving size is a relative term, even in the food industry. Seriously, read this: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/01/this_pint_of_ben_jerrys_is_four_servings.html

    On that note, it's your recipe. You can adjust it how you like, based on how many calories it is and how much you think is going to fill you up. Don't worry so much about what a serving size is of the ingredients, since those all add up. I don't put more than 4 servings worth of any ingredient into a pot of chili, but I get 6 bowls of chili out of a pot. So that's what I use as my serving size. Just cut it down until you get it to a calorie level and amount of food that works for your diet, and log it.

    Awesome, thank you!
  • jeffrowley72
    jeffrowley72 Posts: 9 Member
    We'll add everything into the recipe, and then when it's done weigh the total amount (zero the scale with the empty bowl on there first), then you can take out your portion, weigh it separately and figure out the percentage of the total that you took.

    Sometimes we also weigh the original total and then will pre-portion everything into containers at whatever serving size we decide on. You get one for dinner, and have the next day's lunches all packed up and ready to go...

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