IT IS SO HARD TO COUNTER CALORIES...

OP - amusing rant

Overly sensitive sorts - bullying is obviously not what you think it is. "get a grip" is not a bullying comment. Freaking out over people rightly pointing out bad information seems fairly ridiculous.

OP - back on topic - rather than recipes, maybe save up lots of the various foods you like that are a PITA to enter so you don't have to keep finding them in the general database. Then, if you make something using those foods, just pick and choose from your list -- quicker than searching sometimes. I haven't saved recipes yet - but I do have some favourite meals saved that I found myself entering over and over, such as my salads and roasted vegetables and lamb. It saves me a ton of time to just add that meal then tweak what is different.

penrbrown/moose - Can I just say that you've handled this beautifully considering all of the aggressive garbage that's being thrown around. I actually find it remarkable that despite how lovely you have been in your post and your replies, there are still people out there getting a happy by attacking you and others. You are an inspiration!

Just a summary guys, so far on a thread written for the purpose of having a friendly rant and some chit chat about entering individual ingredients on MFP we've had:

- Someone fairly aggressively attacked for trying to help (albiet with misguided information)
- A mildly interesting debate about fruit stickers
- OP's sanity brought into question
- Some people very affronted by the mere suggestion that you may spend a few more minutes a day logging your food than they do
- And now, some interfering busy body who cares very little about any of the above, and really isn't much of a clean eater

Just an observation...and an opportunity to commend OP on his/her graceful attitude to the angry people of MFP

Oh. *blush* Thank you.. shucks...

*blush blush*

And about all of that... I wouldn't take it too seriously. I've been around MFP long enough to know that's just how this place is. Sometimes people are joking and I take them seriously, sometimes they're serious and I presume they're joking, sometimes they're serious and I know they're serious and so I back off... either way I think the best way to approach MFP is with a great deal of good humor because you just never know how people are going to react and I just don't think fighting is how I want to spend my day.

Spot on!

You guys seriously don't have the bar codes on the stickers?

Most of my foods don't have bar codes OR stickers. My meat is home grown. My vegetables usually lack any stickers. My bananas are the only fruit that has stickers on them and those stickers lack a bar code that scans.

since apples are different sizes, don't you have to weigh them whether you grow them or buy them?

you actually don't need to count calories if you eat clean.

I wish that was the case. I was a fat clean eater for many years.

Maybe if you were eating very calorie dense food and you switch to less dense food you could lose weight without counting but most people need to have some form of portion control to stay on track with their weightloss goals.

To answer the original question: I have gotten in the habit of weighing my meat and any higher calorie produce. Things like spinach or cucumbers I don't bother counting but more dense items like fruit or potatoes can really add up.

you actually don't need to count calories if you eat clean.

You are joking.....right ?

What makes you think all "clean foods" are low calorie? Avocados, bananas, grass feed beef, quinoa, all considered "clean" by most of the 5 million definitions of "clean eating," and all pretty calorie dense.

Until a farmer who eats his wife's homemade meals every day gets fat. 5000 calories of clean food is still 5000 calories. Just because it comes fresh from a meat market and is made with natural ingredients doesn't mean you'll automatically lose weight.

Ok, I feel compelled to clarify my point. I wasn't trying to say she was totally right (see "eh,maybe"). What I was trying to do was try and figure out how she came to her conclusion. Like I said I see what her logic would have to be. I can see how that might work out. It's very suboptimal (in my post I actually listed a couple requirements for her to be right, with a qualifier that in people for whom her idea would apply, the odds of significant weight-gain to start with would be low). Trust me, I think I've thrown enough "a calorie is a calorie, clean and dirty don't matter, sugar isn't the devil, GMO aren't going to kill you and are a good idea, organic can't support the current human population and any effort to make it do so will frag the environment way more than current agribusiness techniques" type rants to show that I'm not, in any way shape or form convinced of the inherent magic of clean eating (I'm assuming plant based, organic, non-GMO however the hell that's suppose to work after however many millennia of genetic modifications as my clean eating definition). However, I've tossed enough of those rants I wanted to at least try and puzzle out someone else's logic, and low and behold I came up with a very narrow, highly conditional circumstance that would allow the occasional lucky soul to lose weight just by eating "clean" and not counting calories.

Sorry if that seemed like I was saying she was right beyond those narrow confines.

Is this real life?

All food you buy has a bar code on it, even fruit.

?

Not where I shop, they don't.

Fortunately, I have a food scale.

I have a bar code on my *kitten*. Wanna see?

OH OH! I want to add my own rant!!!!

When creating recipe's, why the heck am I not able to:

A) Use my phone to create recipe's so I can scan bar codes to enter ingredients?
Modify the quantity of an ingredient instead of having to delete and re-add it?
C) Provide serving sizes in grams or ounces?

Seriously, why is this so difficult????

BTW, I want to purchase fruit with bar codes too! The fruit I get only has the PLU code sticker on it.

Wow, I feel so much better now!