Newbie with Questions About Recipe Tracker and MFP Logging Tips

feraltydreaming
feraltydreaming Posts: 10 Member
in Getting Started
Good morning, everyone.

I will start tracking today, but I have a few questions after having tampered with the recipe builder.

I cook 9 out of 10 meals at home, and I use a lot of recipes that can be found online. MFP seems very convenient for me in the sense that it allows a user to input a link in the recipe builder and, though there is a bit of editing, I do not have to keep moving back and forth between windows to copy/paste individual ingredients. This makes the tracking life of someone who is legally/partially blind much easier *laughs*. However, I did notice that you seem to only get one result for a match. How do you know if that result is from USDA or another user? I would prefer to not use user-submitted entries as I prefer using grams for weight and the USDA entries seem to be the best choice for getting that weight option.

Second Question: When I do eat out, it is usually from one of two local restaurants that serve burgers, wings, etc. I have no way to obtain nutrition information (that I am aware of at least) from these restaurants because they are only local and do not have any nutrition information online. Any advice in relation to how to go about getting to a close estimate at the very least? Example: Yesterday, I had a cheeseburger from them, but I have no idea how much the burger patty weighed to even be able to search MFP for that information with a "beef, ground" entry.

Thirdly: Does anyone have any logging and/or weighing tips that I need to be aware of immediately that might not be so obvious? With my vision impairment, I cannot see nutrition labels 7 out of 10 times, so I have to rely on looking up the product online. Though, 8 out of 10 meals that I eat at this point do not involve nutrition labels at any point during their construction so nutrition labels are not as much of an issue as they used to be when I had more processed foods in my diet. At this point during the year (approaching Winter and Winter), I am having to contend with buying some frozen fruit and vegetables so those are the labels that I am working with. Example: Using frozen, chopped kale rather than fresh. Yesterday, I was having trouble trying to convert the frozen at 1 1/3 cup serving size to 1 cup o fresh *laughs*.

Thank you all for your time and consideration. I look forward to your replies.

-feraltydreaming-

Replies

  • CyberTone
    CyberTone Posts: 7,337 Member
    I created a "Recipe Importer Testing" for my sixth Meal slot in my Food Diary. Since the Food Diary search displays which foods are verified, I use that to test out which item will match better when creating a Recipe or editing one using the new Recipe Importer or Add Recipe Manually function. After finding the correct match, I either delete the item from the "Testing" area or change the quantity to 0.01 so that there is zero nutrition information for those entries in my Food Diary but the entries will still show up in my Recent list. You can also use the Old Recipe Calculator, which uses a similar search engine as the Food Diary, however, once you save a recipe using that, you still have to edit the recipe with the new Recipe Importer search engine.

    For local burger restaurants, I suggest using Five Guys as a good substitute, because it has all of its nutrition information online. There certainly are other national chains that have their nutrition information online for similar types of foods.

    For frozen greens, most likely those are going to be cooked and flash-frozen, so I would search for "kale cooked" and choose "Kale, cooked, boiled, drained, without salt."
  • feraltydreaming
    feraltydreaming Posts: 10 Member
    CyberTone wrote: »
    I created a "Recipe Importer Testing" for my sixth Meal slot in my Food Diary. Since the Food Diary search displays which foods are verified, I use that to test out which item will match better when creating a Recipe or editing one using the new Recipe Importer or Add Recipe Manually function. After finding the correct match, I either delete the item from the "Testing" area or change the quantity to 0.01 so that there is zero nutrition information for those entries in my Food Diary but the entries will still show up in my Recent list. You can also use the Old Recipe Calculator, which uses a similar search engine as the Food Diary, however, once you save a recipe using that, you still have to edit the recipe with the new Recipe Importer search engine."

    Thank you for the response, CyberTone. Though, would you mind elaborating on your comments regarding the Recipe importer Testing. I am not sure that I am understanding your process. I think what I am confused about is how you can have the recipe builder choose the match that you find in the food dairy search.

    -feraltydreaming-
  • CyberTone
    CyberTone Posts: 7,337 Member
    edited November 2015
    feraltydreaming wrote: »
    CyberTone wrote: »
    I created a "Recipe Importer Testing" for my sixth Meal slot in my Food Diary. Since the Food Diary search displays which foods are verified, I use that to test out which item will match better when creating a Recipe or editing one using the new Recipe Importer or Add Recipe Manually function. After finding the correct match, I either delete the item from the "Testing" area or change the quantity to 0.01 so that there is zero nutrition information for those entries in my Food Diary but the entries will still show up in my Recent list. You can also use the Old Recipe Calculator, which uses a similar search engine as the Food Diary, however, once you save a recipe using that, you still have to edit the recipe with the new Recipe Importer search engine."

    Thank you for the response, CyberTone. Though, would you mind elaborating on your comments regarding the Recipe importer Testing. I am not sure that I am understanding your process. I think what I am confused about is how you can have the recipe builder choose the match that you find in the food dairy search.

    -feraltydreaming-

    I have the Recipe Importer editing page open in one tab and the Food Diary in another tab (or two windows side by side). After doing a search on the Add Food to Food Diary page, I will locate the entry I want to use, note the exact name, note all of the drop down choices for serving sizes, and note the corresponding nutrition information. Armed with that information, I will go to the Recipe Importer edit page and use the exact name that I previously found from the Add to Food Diary search. Then I will try to verify that the two database items are an exact match. It works about 99 percent of the time. If that fails, I just start over using the Old Recipe Calculator instead of the Recipe Importer.
  • feraltydreaming
    feraltydreaming Posts: 10 Member
    Ahh, I understand now. Thank you very much for the elaboration, CyberTone. This is very useful information given that I just made a pot of rabbit noodle soup tonight and will need to enter it.
  • dubird
    dubird Posts: 1,849 Member
    When you use the recipe importer, you can change the ingredients themselves, you don't have to stick with what it originally pulls up. There should be a link that says 'Replace' on the ingredient. Click that and it should search the food diary and give you options. The green verified check does appear there too (at least it did for me on the last one I entered), so you should be able to check as you go. If you want, can also have another tab open to USDA or whatever website the food came from to double check it.
  • feraltydreaming
    feraltydreaming Posts: 10 Member
    dubird wrote: »
    When you use the recipe importer, you can change the ingredients themselves, you don't have to stick with what it originally pulls up. There should be a link that says 'Replace' on the ingredient. Click that and it should search the food diary and give you options. The green verified check does appear there too (at least it did for me on the last one I entered), so you should be able to check as you go. If you want, can also have another tab open to USDA or whatever website the food came from to double check it.

    When you use the "replace" function, does the entry that does not have a brand, "Generic", or "Homemade" mean that is a USDA or other non user-submitted entry?

  • CyberTone
    CyberTone Posts: 7,337 Member
    feraltydreaming wrote: »
    <<snip>>
    When you use the "replace" function, does the entry that does not have a brand, "Generic", or "Homemade" mean that is a USDA or other non user-submitted entry?
    For the most part, yes; however, I am not 100% sure of that. After MFP implemented the "verified" entries, there have been a few database items I have found that I know MFP originally entered, but somehow got corrupted and MFP fixed, but could now have "generic" in the Brand/Restaurant field.
    In the screen capture below, the entry for "Onions, sweet, raw" has no Brand/Restaurant information directly below the name, and the drop down serving sizes track with the USDA National Nutrient Database serving sizes, so there is a high probability that it was entered by MFP Staff. The other entries for onions have "Walla Walla," "Triscuit," or "Subway" under the name, so those are most likely MFP user entered.

    q2kq2zzs8nyj.jpg
  • feraltydreaming
    feraltydreaming Posts: 10 Member
    Thank you, CyberTone. I actually used onions in a stir-fry recipe tonight, so this is quite useful for tonight and in other instances.

    *gives a sigh of relief to be done with logging for the day* Ugh...I feel like I am almost being penalized for having a lot of variety and working with a lot of whole-food recipes. I made 3 different, complete recipes today and it has taken me almost 2 hours to log everything (I felt like I had to keep triple-checking to make sure that I was getting the right entry). I am hoping that is because I am new to this and that it will get faster as time goes on. Only the vegetable stir-fry is a recipe that I am likely to make more frequently. The other two were good...I just usually cook and freeze, cook and share, or cook single-serving portions so I end up with a lot of variety and a lot of recipes because of that *laughs*.
  • dubird
    dubird Posts: 1,849 Member
    feraltydreaming wrote: »
    Thank you, CyberTone. I actually used onions in a stir-fry recipe tonight, so this is quite useful for tonight and in other instances.

    *gives a sigh of relief to be done with logging for the day* Ugh...I feel like I am almost being penalized for having a lot of variety and working with a lot of whole-food recipes. I made 3 different, complete recipes today and it has taken me almost 2 hours to log everything (I felt like I had to keep triple-checking to make sure that I was getting the right entry). I am hoping that is because I am new to this and that it will get faster as time goes on. Only the vegetable stir-fry is a recipe that I am likely to make more frequently. The other two were good...I just usually cook and freeze, cook and share, or cook single-serving portions so I end up with a lot of variety and a lot of recipes because of that *laughs*.

    Yeah, but once you enter the recipe, it's saved and you can go back to it, which is handy. Even if it's something you don't eat a lot, if you'll eat at least once in the future, it's time not wasted. Logging is hard and slow at first until you get the hang of it. And until you get your frequently used foods list populated! Your time spend on logging will slowly go down the longer you do it. ^_^

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