MFP Recipe Calorie Calculator Faulty???

StalgiaPasternak
StalgiaPasternak Posts: 55 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hi Everyone,

I've been entering a lot of recipes into the recipe calories calculator so that I can try and use recipes I like and either tweak them to be lighter or find lighter recipes online.

I usually use a lot of Cooking Light recipes as well as some recipes from cookbooks that do not reveal the nutritional information (Gwyneth Paltrow It's All Good, Oh She Glows, etc.). What's been freaking me out is that when I import a recipe from Cooking Light that already has the calorie count given using the URL or if I simply copy and paste the ingredients and ask the recipe calculator to match the ingredients, the difference in MFP's Recipe Calculator and Cooking Light's is ENORMOUS!

I just tried to add a light Pumpkin Pie recipe, for example, and Cooking Light has a slice at 238 calories and MFP has a slice at 489 calories!!! I've double checked the ingredients over and over and it's still putting the calorie count so high.

Has anyone else noticed this? Should I trust the Cooking Light over the MFP? Only, then I'm worried about the other recipes I've been using where I've manually entered. What if MFP is either grossly over estimating or under estimating the calorie count?

Any advice?

Replies

  • shadow2soul
    shadow2soul Posts: 7,692 Member
    My guess, and this is totally just a guess, is either A) cooking light is off a bit or B) your adding incorrect database entries for the ingredients.

    The database here isn't 100% correct for every entry, because you have entries that people manually put in themselves. I've seen entries where the calorie count is higher than what is actually listed on the nutrition label. So unless your comparing your entries to an items nutritional label to confirm they are correct, you could very well have incorrect entries in your recipe.

    example:
    Kirkwood - Cordon Bleu Chicken Breast
    Package says: 220 calories
    MFP Database entries range from: 200 - 340
  • alaynavee
    alaynavee Posts: 148 Member
    I've only used the recipe calculator a few times, but I would trust it's accuracy. The only thing I could think of that would throw your count off is the serving size, a slice a pie could be very different depending on what size dish you used to bake it in, ie. 10" deep vs. 8" pie??
  • Debbjones
    Debbjones Posts: 278 Member
    Try this website...

    http://caloriecount.about.com/cc/recipe_analysis.php

    You enter the ingredients and it will give you the nutritional values in the common "Nutritional Value table format", the same Nutritional Data you see printed on packaged food items.

    I copy entire recipes off the web and paste them in... many require a little "tweaking" for their database to find the actual ingredient... but I use this site often. A good reference point...

    Just a suggestion! :-)
  • TeaBea
    TeaBea Posts: 14,517 Member
    My guess, and this is totally just a guess, is either A) cooking light is off a bit or B) your adding incorrect database entries for the ingredients.

    The database here isn't 100% correct for every entry, because you have entries that people manually put in themselves. I've seen entries where the calorie count is higher than what is actually listed on the nutrition label. So unless your comparing your entries to an items nutritional label to confirm they are correct, you could very well have incorrect entries in your recipe.

    This^

    I was inputing high carb - low fat peanuts.....yeah right, like those exist.

    Here's a good read.....

    http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/1234699-logging-accurately-step-by-step-guide
  • AliceDark
    AliceDark Posts: 3,886 Member
    Also, double-check all the ingredients to make sure that the recipe builder is capturing all the details correctly. If the Cooking Light recipe uses a specific brand of pie crust, for example, you won't get the same calorie count if the recipe builder grabs a different brand. Another thing to look for would be fat free items vs. full-fat items. The recipe builder isn't perfect, and you do need to double-check to make sure it gets ingredients and quantities correct.
  • StaciMarie1974
    StaciMarie1974 Posts: 4,138 Member
    From the 2 sites - is the # of slices the same?
  • WalkingAlong
    WalkingAlong Posts: 4,926 Member
    When you edit the recipe here you can see the calories it attached to each ingredient. If you add them up and divide by servings you should get the 489. One ingredient should stand out as way too high, assuming it's not the number of servings that's too low.
  • StalgiaPasternak
    StalgiaPasternak Posts: 55 Member
    Hi Everyone,

    Thank you for all your replies! I honestly did check all the ingredients about 4 times and I did have to alter a few. At first, it said one slice was 9000 calories so there was obviously a serious issue! The crust in this recipe is included so all the ingredients are included in the calculation. It's so strange.

    I just wish all this nutritional data was law and everyone had to share is so that our lives would be easier!
  • StalgiaPasternak
    StalgiaPasternak Posts: 55 Member
    Okay So I just compared MFP's calculator for one recipe (Gwyneth Paltrow Brownies) to the Calorie Count one and they were identical so I think that's good.
  • 12pillows
    12pillows Posts: 81 Member
    The recipe builder is a nightmare. For some reason it has hardly any options in it, cause there's things I log often in my food diary that don't exist when logging items in a recipe, and it always comes up with random things when you first enter them.

    Like I put in a list of ingredients cause I was making banana and cherry cake, and it replaced 80% of the ingredients with coriander on the next page! Always takes me ages and a lot of googling to get everything logged as accurately as I can in it.
  • StalgiaPasternak
    StalgiaPasternak Posts: 55 Member
    Few so I'm not the only one! I just really want to do things right this time so I don't want to be overeating or worse not eating things because of faulty calculations. I think I'm going to go with double checking with that other source for a while and seeing if MFP comes up consistent.
  • mtnparknw
    mtnparknw Posts: 1 Member
    You do have to check all the ingredients before finalizing the save. The MFP recipe importer just grabs an item with the same product name and it may or may not be the correct calorie count. For example I imported a sea bass recipe. MFP used a calculation that showed the fish being 1300 calories (it was perhaps pulling up a sea bass cooked in butter or ???). I googled the calorie count for this same amount of fish (pulls up from USDA) and the actual calorie count was 650. So you kind of have to edit each recipe which is a pain.
  • nutmegoreo
    nutmegoreo Posts: 15,532 Member
    mtnparknw wrote: »
    You do have to check all the ingredients before finalizing the save. The MFP recipe importer just grabs an item with the same product name and it may or may not be the correct calorie count. For example I imported a sea bass recipe. MFP used a calculation that showed the fish being 1300 calories (it was perhaps pulling up a sea bass cooked in butter or ???). I googled the calorie count for this same amount of fish (pulls up from USDA) and the actual calorie count was 650. So you kind of have to edit each recipe which is a pain.

    Yes, you have to check each item that the recipe builder brings in. They seem to find the weirdest inaccurate entries. That being said, I don't necessarily blindly trust the calories given by recipe creators either. I usually just enter everything manually.
  • KrissFlavored
    KrissFlavored Posts: 327 Member
    edited April 2020
    Never been a big fan of the recipe builder
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,622 Member
    It's nice that someone wants to help an OP who last posted in 2014, and doesn't seem to have participated since 2018 . . . but I'm thinking she's probably already figured it out, or has given up. :(
  • pmtbell
    pmtbell Posts: 1 Member
    I have tried numerous recipe calculators and have experienced the same thing. I have gone over and over my manual calculations and although I have found an error here or there, nothing to justify the difference between my total and MyFitnessPal total. Like MyFitnessPal was twice the amount of my manual calculations. If anyone finds a calculator that actually works, I would love to try it. Thanks y'all and have a great day!
  • PAV8888
    PAV8888 Posts: 14,312 Member
    Have you checked the entries that are being used by MFP?

    If you change them to 100g do the numbers in the entries make sense and agree with information you would get from the USDA or other sources?

    Either, or BOTH of your manual calculations and MFP may have errors.
  • sollyn23l2
    sollyn23l2 Posts: 1,788 Member
    StalgiaPasternak wrote: »
    Hi Everyone,

    I've been entering a lot of recipes into the recipe calories calculator so that I can try and use recipes I like and either tweak them to be lighter or find lighter recipes online.

    I usually use a lot of Cooking Light recipes as well as some recipes from cookbooks that do not reveal the nutritional information (Gwyneth Paltrow It's All Good, Oh She Glows, etc.). What's been freaking me out is that when I import a recipe from Cooking Light that already has the calorie count given using the URL or if I simply copy and paste the ingredients and ask the recipe calculator to match the ingredients, the difference in MFP's Recipe Calculator and Cooking Light's is ENORMOUS!

    I just tried to add a light Pumpkin Pie recipe, for example, and Cooking Light has a slice at 238 calories and MFP has a slice at 489 calories!!! I've double checked the ingredients over and over and it's still putting the calorie count so high.

    Has anyone else noticed this? Should I trust the Cooking Light over the MFP? Only, then I'm worried about the other recipes I've been using where I've manually entered. What if MFP is either grossly over estimating or under estimating the calorie count?

    Any advice?

    That could be due to the size of the slice. Maybe MFP is figuring a larger slice?
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,622 Member
    pmtbell wrote: »
    I have tried numerous recipe calculators and have experienced the same thing. I have gone over and over my manual calculations and although I have found an error here or there, nothing to justify the difference between my total and MyFitnessPal total. Like MyFitnessPal was twice the amount of my manual calculations. If anyone finds a calculator that actually works, I would love to try it. Thanks y'all and have a great day!

    I've found the MFP calculator to work fine. The key for me is not to just blindly accept its ingredient matches, but to validate each one as I would if were logging individual food items in my diary. If the "matched" entries are inaccurate, the totals will be inaccurate.

    IMO, the MFP web browser's recipe function is particularly opaque (literally). The item editing options are hidden until you hover the cursor over them. They're to the right of the item. If you get the cursor to the right place, you should see "Edit Quantity Replace Remove" which are 3 separate things you can click to review or adjust each ingredient to ensure you have a correct entry.

    The phone/tablet app isn't lots better. You may have to use the three-dots menu or some other thing to get to the ability to edit, or delete an ingredient and add a new one. I'm less familiar with doing this on the app, though, since I find it easier to input recipes in web MFP.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,052 Member
    pmtbell wrote: »
    I have tried numerous recipe calculators and have experienced the same thing. I have gone over and over my manual calculations and although I have found an error here or there, nothing to justify the difference between my total and MyFitnessPal total. Like MyFitnessPal was twice the amount of my manual calculations. If anyone finds a calculator that actually works, I would love to try it. Thanks y'all and have a great day!

    The MyFitnessPal ingredient "matcher" is often wrong for 100% of the ingredients, even if I first change the name to be something I know from long experience is in the database.

    Why do I continue to use it? I like having the thumbnail and link to the recipe. As far as I'm concerned, that's the Recipe Importer's only value.

    After the ingredients are pulled in, I fix them using this process:

    To find ADMIN-created entries for whole foods that MFP pulled from the USDA database (as opposed to crowd-sourced USER-created entries,) I get the syntax from the USDA database and paste that into MFP. All ADMIN entries from the USDA will have weights as an option BUT there is a glitch whereby sometimes 1g is the option but the values are actually for 100g. This is pretty easy to spot though, as when added the calories are 100x more than is reasonable.

    https://fdc.nal.usda.gov

    Use the “SR Legacy” tab - that's what MFP used to pull in entries.

    Note: any MFP entry that includes "USDA" was USER entered.

    For packaged foods, I verify the label against what I find in MFP. (Alas, you cannot just scan with your phone and assume what you get is correct. Note: scanning is mostly only available with Premium these days.)
  • cinaminonly
    cinaminonly Posts: 7 Member
    well i came upon this after entering a recipe on MFP. The recipe website and MFP don't come close to matching. The website nutritional value has calories at 267, MFP has it at 310. what's more disturbing is the sodium - website 357, MFP 759. This is problematic for me. I'm not sure which one to trust. I'm using MFP because it enables me to see the nutritional values - fat, carb, sodium, protein, calories with the carb fact most important because i'm diabetic which WW doesn't do (former user) but now i'm not confident at all the information is correct and where I am on a daily basis as far as my eating.

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