How do I log indian food?

Djhfjy
Djhfjy Posts: 10 Member
edited October 2019 in Food and Nutrition
There is a lack of indian food on myfitnesspal and even if i find it, i don't know if its identical to what my mom made (i dont make the food)

this is extremely annoying, can anyone pls help. I am honestly considering changing to eating only american food as this rlly affects my diet. (which is not good as we always only have indian food for dinner and i kinda like Indian food)

(PS: I do have a kitchen scale so i am able to calc the grams of the food)

Replies

  • corinasue1143
    corinasue1143 Posts: 7,464 Member
    Of course it won’t be identical, but will it be close?
    Don’t stop eating your moms good food. Ask her how she makes it. Ask if you can see her cookbooks. Figure it out on the recipe builder here on MFP.
    Most of all, do your new friends here a favor. When you have something that’s not on the database, enter it to share it with us. Make the next persons job easier.
    I love Indian food, but don’t know how to cook it and have no idea of calories. I’d personally love it if you’d share info, recipes.

  • AustinRuadhain
    AustinRuadhain Posts: 2,595 Member
    @Djhfjy - Just to confirm -- the gap is on all kinds of home-cooked food. Using the recipe builder is the fix for that for me, too. I live in Texas, and could doubtless find something in the database that matches names of common foods (say, "beef taco"), but any entry I found could be way, way different than what I actually ate, because recipes are so different, and those recipes have a huge effect on calories/nutrition.

    If your mom is like many people, she doesn't actually make a huge range of different dishes. Once you have 10-20 recipes logged, you'll probably have covered much of what she does.

    Good luck!
  • melodyvegan
    melodyvegan Posts: 59 Member
    edited October 2019
    @Djhfjy - my partner is Sri Lankan and makes a lot of Sri Lankan food at home, basically the same curries every time. There are even fewer Sri Lankan recipes in MFP than Indian ones!

    My approach: I have joined him in the kitchen every time he cooks a new dish and have weighed solid or measured liquid ingredients before they go in the pot. I write every ingredient down by weight, use the recipe builder to put it all together, and weigh the final product to figure out how many servings the dish is. I do this only one time for each recipe and next time he cooks it, I just edit the recipe with any modifications of high calorie ingredients (for example, if he used more lentils or coconut milk than last time he made it). If you don't have a food scale, using measuring cups and spoons or whole ingredients (like "6 tomatoes') will get you closer to accuracy than just picking a random entry in the database that could be totally different than your mom's recipe.

    The recipes my partner makes rarely change significantly so it means I've only had to build a recipe once and then I can use that same recipe to get an exact or pretty close estimation of calories every time he makes it again. I currently have about 10 typical/traditional curries in my database. It makes life so much easier - and more delicious than just eating typical "American" food!.

    The recipe builder is a great tool to use!

    Good luck!
  • lemurcat2
    lemurcat2 Posts: 7,885 Member
    It's actually to your benefit that there aren't a lot of homemade entries for Indian food, as they would not be accurate (neither is someone's pot roast entry or what not).

    The only way to do it accurately is to create your own recipes or log the components individually. Seeing how your mom cooks them and then logging how much you eat of the various components.

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