I'm confused by the Myfitnesspal data base! Can you help?

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aidan1949
aidan1949 Posts: 17 Member
in Getting Started
We had a lovely baked chicken curry tonight from a recipe book by Hugh Fearnley-Whitingstall. It's in his River Cottage Everyday book.

I weighed the portion on that went onto my plate and thought that I would do some research afterward. Googling it, the Myfitnesspal database came up and gave me a figure of 310 kCal for "a bowl". But it didn't tell me how big this bowl was or how much was in it! I clicked the little drop-down next to " bowl" hoping that it might give me a measurable amount. Unfortunately, no.

I really can't see the point in giving a calorific value for a vague and unmeasured quantity? How was the figure of 310 kCal calculated? Was there 100g in the bowl or 200g or maybe 300g?

Can anyone help me understand the database or how these figures are calculated?

Replies

  • jasdebi2012
    jasdebi2012 Posts: 15 Member
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    Yup. In general, I would advise to create your own food entries, if you want to monitor everything else. I have found several mistakes in other entries, and I realized it was much less time-consuming for me to do the job myself than correcting 1000000 different things.

    Another example is that you can personify your percentages. So, there are issues with male/female differences. Most (if not all) RDA %s in nutrient labels quote the percentage for females (which are almost double to the needs of a male, 18mg vs 8mg). So users will in general use those and so you might think you are undereating iron.
  • BMcC9
    BMcC9 Posts: 4,408 Member
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    In general - as I understand it, what has already been posted is the standard way to go. And once you enter a "your recipe " on the last tab of your food diary you never have to enter it again, and it is easy to tweek ingredients / this batch's total weight kind of thing without having to re-enter everything from scratch. You can also (on the second-last tab) pre-group commonly-repeated combos into "your meals" for single click fast entries.

    might take more research, or someone more familiar with the app version might know but i THINK i might have heard that you can somehow "scan in" recipe values from a public-domain source? book or magazine, but maybe has to be electronic already? (like a recipe in the June issue of Chatelaine or Good Housekeeping or something like that - you mentioned that this originally came from a book .... )

    I have never tried or even looked into this - but not an adventurous cook-type myself.

    There is a message board devoted to recipes, and the people who post there might be more knowledgeable about this or other lesser-known tips&tricks for this kind of situation.
  • hipari
    hipari Posts: 1,367 Member
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    For the moment you eventually eat food prepared by someone else and can’t weigh it or nutrition information isn’t available: I know many here try to avoid these moments, but not possible in my life. So, yesterday I went to an independent Korean restaurant and had beef bulgogi. I made mental notes about serving size, how much rice etc., and what seemed to be the ingredients and how oily it was to make a semi-educated calorie guess. When I was finished with my meal and no longer in the company of my lovely friends, I looked up beef bulgogi in the database, compared different entries and how much carbs, protein and calories they contained, and simply guessed to the best of my ability, logging something a little higher in calories than my original guess.
  • tonito1989
    tonito1989 Posts: 10 Member
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    I have a question. I thought that if I have baked potato has one amount of calories if it is boiled another. If using the feature to make my own recipe isn't that less accurate if I add calories per row veggie and not cooked? Yesterday I made a salad it made sense to weight the ingredients and then just to add them but what if I was to make a soup?
  • nanastaci2020
    nanastaci2020 Posts: 1,072 Member
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    Does the way in which you cook the food change the calorie content, or just the weight of the food item? It is more accurate to add all the raw ingredients: assuming you also account for anything that will change the calorie content such as oil.

    If you have a raw potato and boil it: you are not changing its calories. But the weight of the potato will change. Cooking a food item causes it to weigh less if it loses moisture or to weight more if it absorbs additional moisture. A piece of meat will weigh less after cooking because it is dryer after. A handful of pasta will weigh more. But if you take 56g of pasta and boil it til done in water (no added oil or anything else with calories of its own) then the cooked pasta will weigh the same as the 56g raw. But depending on how long you cook the pasta and how well you drain it, your 56g dry pasta may weigh a little more or less each time you cook it.

    tonito1989 wrote: »
    I have a question. I thought that if I have baked potato has one amount of calories if it is boiled another. If using the feature to make my own recipe isn't that less accurate if I add calories per row veggie and not cooked? Yesterday I made a salad it made sense to weight the ingredients and then just to add them but what if I was to make a soup?

  • nikkigetsthinner
    nikkigetsthinner Posts: 19 Member
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    I think if you cook yourself, you better create a recipe for it. That way you will have a fairly accurate knowledge about how much calorie you consume. I cook most of my own food and therefore always use the recipe builder. Really felt the difficulty in counting calories when I eat out because there are so many entries for the same type of dish.
  • tonito1989
    tonito1989 Posts: 10 Member
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    nanamerriman2020 wrote: »
    Does the way in which you cook the food change the calorie content, or just the weight of the food item? It is more accurate to add all the raw ingredients: assuming you also account for anything that will change the calorie content such as oil.

    If you have a raw potato and boil it: you are not changing its calories. But the weight of the potato will change. Cooking a food item causes it to weigh less if it loses moisture or to weight more if it absorbs additional moisture. A piece of meat will weigh less after cooking because it is dryer after. A handful of pasta will weigh more. But if you take 56g of pasta and boil it til done in water (no added oil or anything else with calories of its own) then the cooked pasta will weigh the same as the 56g raw. But depending on how long you cook the pasta and how well you drain it, your 56g dry pasta may weigh a little more or less each time you cook it.

    If you type calories in baked potatoes and calories in boiled potatoes you can see a different amount of calories. I do not know as there is plenty of information online. As well I found the following on one website:

    Cooking a potato in water depletes it of some of its nutrients. A baked potato is more nutrient-dense, providing 6 grams of protein and 6 grams of fiber. It has about 25 percent more magnesium as a boiled potato. It also contains 40 percent more phosphorus and potassium, as well as four times the amount of folate in a boiled potato. Pregnant women, who need an adequate amount of folate to prevent neural tube birth defects in their unborn children, benefit from eating potatoes baked, rather than boiled.

  • HeidiCooksSupper
    HeidiCooksSupper Posts: 3,831 Member
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    The database is like a thrift store under bad management. We all add stuff to it -- some is useful, some isn't. You can usually find what you need but it takes both searching work and knowing what you are looking for. This requires doing some research in other sources, too, to have a good idea of how many calories something is likely to have. A good place to help with guessing numbers is "Food Data Central" (https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/). Another is to search for a brand name product and the word "nutrition" which usually can find the nutrition label for things.

    Since I live in a community where dinner is delivered and have no idea what they do in the kitchen except that they aim toward low sodium and low fat, I make guesses and choose "best" matches all the time. For example, if I get some potato salad that looks pretty much like deli counter potato salad, I just use something from the database for a grocery store chain potato salad. Of course, I can't know whether this is wholly accurate but it is close enough that I'm losing weight regularly.

    Just don't fall into the trap some do. Don't always lean toward choosing the listing with the fewest calories. This can definitely lead you astray and you can end up gaining weight even though your diary suggests you are consuming fewer calories.

    Finally, believe the label on a branded product rather than the listing. Manufacturers change recipes and packaging and this can easily change the number of calories. Also, manufacturers use different factories and may have different packaging or formulas regionally.
  • aidan1949
    aidan1949 Posts: 17 Member
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    Many thanks for all the replies. There are some useful things for me to try and some handy warnings and tips.

    Can I have a little help with the recipe builder tool? I guess it's the 'recipe' tab that I start from? So I need to do a some research on the calories etc. in a recipe, from the ingredients and then I can call this up if I have the recipe again and not have to recalculate values?

    For one-offs like a branded spread, which I might use in different meals, I could list this in my 'recipes' and call it up and then adjust the quantity by weight in my food diary?

    A simple guide to using it would be great,
  • Xiaolongbao
    Xiaolongbao Posts: 854 Member
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    Yes to what you’ve asked.

    Personally I find the recipe tool on MFP really troublesome to use. I was here a few years back and it seemed to work much better then. Thanks to my frustrations I have stopped bothering with it.

    Also I like to get “creative” when cooking so never follow exactly the same recipe.

    So what I do is every time I cook I weigh all the ingredients and work out exactly how many calories in the entire dish then weigh the end product. Get a “calories per gram” number. That goes on a piece of paper on the fridge then I just “quick add” the calories every time I eat it.

    But this only works if you don’t care about tracking macros. If you look at my diary you’ll see lots of “quick add” entries. Total calories per day is very accurate but macros are useless with this method.
  • aidan1949
    aidan1949 Posts: 17 Member
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    Thanks for your post Xiaolongbao. I like your methodology and I guess over time your fridge list grows to include many of the things that you enjoy.

    Can you tell me what "tracking macros" are, please?
  • BMcC9
    BMcC9 Posts: 4,408 Member
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    aidan1949 wrote: »
    Thanks for your post Xiaolongbao. I like your methodology and I guess over time your fridge list grows to include many of the things that you enjoy.

    Can you tell me what "tracking macros" are, please?

    "Tracking macros" means you feel (or have been advised by a dr / nutritionist) to pay attention to spreading your total calories across the break-down by % across the bottom line of your food diary so that most are green or nearly green. The Big Three are carbs vs fat vs protein and these 3 add up to 100% (someone eating keto-style would have altered the default breakdown to have more in protein and less in carbs than the default)

    The other available spaces across the line can be used to pay attention to smaller-proportion subdivisions or nutrients. You might want to display how much sodium you are taking in - or subdivide total carbs into sugars vs fiber.

    All can be adjusted by going first to the Food Tab, and then clicking on "Setting" rather than "Diary"
  • hipari
    hipari Posts: 1,367 Member
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    The three macronutrients are carbohydrates (carbs), protein and fat. These are the three things that have calories. The fourth is alcohol, but calling it a ”nutrient” is a stretch.

    Tracking them and how your calorie intake is split between them is absolutely not necessary for weight loss. Many still find it helpful for their goals, due to a variety of reasons. Personally, I don’t follow percentages but aim for at least 100g of protein per day because protein is a key thing for my satiation. Some follow low-carb or keto diets as a choice, some focus on protein for muscle-building etc. These are personal choices and some do better on certain macro splits than others.

    Then there are micronutrients, which are the things we traditionally think about when we think ”nutrients”: vitamins, minerals like iron and so on. Many track amounts of sodium and sugar here due to health concerns and dr recommendations. Many women need to keep an extra eye on iron because we lose blood (and therefore iron) monthly. If you feel fine, have no conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure etc and your doctor hasn’t recommended you track a specific nutrient, it’s fine to ignore these.
  • aidan1949
    aidan1949 Posts: 17 Member
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    Thanks for the additional advice. From what people have said, I shall leave the macros alone. My doctor advises a 'balanced' diet and here in the UK, I'm taking this to mean the NHS advice at https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/
  • BMcC9
    BMcC9 Posts: 4,408 Member
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    aidan1949 wrote: »
    Thanks for the additional advice. From what people have said, I shall leave the macros alone. My doctor advises a 'balanced' diet and here in the UK, I'm taking this to mean the NHS advice at https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/

    sounds like a sound option.

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