Using the MFP recipe tool

I used it for the first time this week, and nearly all the nutrition data was off. If you click the individual items, you can search for more accurate entries or add them yourself.

No, I used the recipe importer but then changed the items once it was in MFP by clicking Edit Recipe. It saved some time, but you're right - not as much as it could have done.

Ahh I see, it will still work though (hopefully!)

I mean the clicking it and modifying bit ;-)

Never ever trust the calorie count given by recipe websites. It's always off.

I import the recipe and then go through and verify that each item that MFP matched it up to is correct. Sometimes it gets confused on the quantity or it picks a match that is incorrect. Usually, most of the items are correct, but I have to modify one or two of them manually. If you have one incorrect conversion, it can throw everything way off.

Can I look at it? Will you post the link to the recipe?

I really thought it was going to be in the meat. But mfp gave more grams of protein for less calories. The food.com recipe shows way way more fat. Maybe a fattier chicken? I'm new at this too so maybe someone with experience will post the right answer. I only looked at the cashew chicken. It looks yummy btw

I would trust mfp personally. It's their business to get the calories right. I think the fat count at food.com looks really high. I wish food.com broke the recipe down for us.

It's the cashews in the cashew chicken. The MFP selection says 380 calories per cup, which is about how many calories are in a half cup. That would also explain the difference in fat. Sometimes it takes a bit of practice/general knowledge of calories to spot which entry may be wrong. That's the problem with the recipe builder.

You can always use a half cup of cashews if you are trying to reduce the calories.

Well I just tried a recipe import and had a similar problem. I ended up going through and editing with the barcode on the ingredients I used. The biggest offender, MFP imported white sugar as brown sugar, so I switched that (just by searching), but the sugar calories seemed high, so I ended up using the barcode method for that one as well-- turns out, it was off by 500 calories!!! (I was making a cake, btw). Because of that I went through and checked them all... most of them were too high, actually, but there were a few ingredients that were too low in calories.

If you are on a desktop instead of a phone you can opt to use the old recipe builder which makes you search each ingredient. I use this if I don't have a ton of ingredients.