Beware the recipe importer!

Xiaolongbao
Xiaolongbao Posts: 854 Member
in Food and Nutrition
This made me laugh today.

I am cooking vegan lasagne and I used the recipe importer on MFP. I was a bit shocked that it came out to almost 800 calories a serve... I mean it is lasagne but still! Anyway once I got it cooking I sat down and checked why it was so high in calories. I found out that there were 600 calories of parsley included! I can't even imagine how much parsley you'd need to be eating to get 600 calories (for the record it was correctly logged as a quarter of a cup). There was also almost 800 calories worth of garlic logged! Another impressive feat - and once again correctly logged as 3 cloves, I have no idea how it came up with the calorie numbers.

I went through and fixed all the ingredients (other issues were no where near as interesting) and now it's about 250 calories a serve. Much more reasonable.

I guess I've learned a lesson about taking short cuts with the recipe importer.

Replies

  • Phrick
    Phrick Posts: 2,765 Member
    oh the importer is absolute trash! Glad you figured out the mistakes in your recipe! I hate the importer and the "new" recipe builder that was actually the straw that made me quit logging at MFP and go elsewhere. Now I just like to hang around for my friends list and the forums!
  • KDar1988
    KDar1988 Posts: 648 Member
    Agreed. You have to monitor what it has matched. It's done that to me also.
  • PollyEH
    PollyEH Posts: 21 Member
    Yeah, I've had the same problem. I still find it useful, for working out the individual serving sizes, but check the ingredients one by one to make sure the cals look right.
  • suziecue20
    suziecue20 Posts: 567 Member
    I use the recipe builder quite a lot but now always check every ingredient before saving. The first time input 2 cloves of garlic I panicked when the recipe came out at over 6,000 calories per portion lol

  • meganmoore112
    meganmoore112 Posts: 174 Member
    What is up with the garlic? It did that to me too. I've been using the old school recipe builder where you do it one item at a time.
  • callsitlikeiseeit
    callsitlikeiseeit Posts: 8,626 Member
    i use the recipe importer all the time...

    yes, you need to double check it LOL
  • Queenmunchy
    Queenmunchy Posts: 3,380 Member
    callsitlikeiseeit wrote: »
    i use the recipe importer all the time...

    yes, you need to double check it LOL

    Yep, just like the manual entry. Just match up/edit as needed.
  • faberallison
    faberallison Posts: 45 Member
    I just got a 6K calorie garlic too. And my sesame seeds were 2K. Definitely check haha!
  • abatonfan
    abatonfan Posts: 1,120 Member
    I always get that garlic entry. It's frustrated me so much that I want to throw garlic at the person who created that horribly wrong entry (or push them off a cliff and into a sea of their 800-calorie garlic cloves). >:)
  • macchiatto
    macchiatto Posts: 2,890 Member
    LOL yes, I'll be going along fine and then something comes up that's thousands of calories more than it should be.
  • karahm78
    karahm78 Posts: 505 Member
    I still use the old recipe builder for this reason!

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