Be Careful Logging Recipes

CurseofDolkite
CurseofDolkite Posts: 31 Member
in Food and Nutrition
I've found that it pays to "check your work" when inputting recipes. I've had ingredients go wildly off kilter, sometimes more, sometimes less. Having this database is great, but I wish there was a way they could verify nutrition info rather than have five versions of the same thing. Even something as simple as chicken breasts can be off if you're not careful.

Replies

  • callsitlikeiseeit
    callsitlikeiseeit Posts: 8,626 Member
    lesson #1 of logging ANYTHING ;)
  • CurseofDolkite
    CurseofDolkite Posts: 31 Member
    kshama2001 wrote: »
    I only use the recipe importer for the thumbnail and the link to the recipe

    I'm hand-entering a fair amount of recipes because I get them from books. You always need to check (for example, "1 onion" comes up as "1 oz onion", so I usually put "1 cup onion") after it pulls all the ingredients, but the REALLY crazy stuff happens when using name brand stuff. I'm making pulled pork that uses 1/4 cup of French's yellow mustard; the label says it's basically zero calories, the first entry on MFP put it at 850 calories! There are maybe half a dozen entries for that particular brand.

  • goal06082021
    goal06082021 Posts: 2,130 Member
    Yeah, this has always been an issue with the recipe builder, even if you enter your ingredients by weight in grams and match the syntax of the entry you want MFP to use exactly. Especially for things like seasonings that you're probably not using that much of - most herbs are effectively zero calorie, I only really include them at all to remember what I put in a dish, but some spices do have calories, like powdered onion and garlic. Just not, you know, 800 calories per teaspoon, that's wild.

    I think at this point, with 15 years' worth of largely user-submitted entries, scrubbing the database would be a full-time job for someone if MFP were so inclined to hire someone to do that. I'm doubtful it's going to happen, though. Maybe if the original developers hadn't sold it to UnderArmour. I don't know much about our new owners but I don't think they're likely to invest in a project like this.
  • Hamiltonfamily2018
    Hamiltonfamily2018 Posts: 81 Member
    Does anyone have a reliable website for this? I have been trying to figure out how to log my brisket tonight and the numbers are ALL over the place everywhere I look
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,052 Member
    I make the MFP recipe builder work.

    Here are options for brisket:

    https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/?query=brisket

    Find the one that is closest to what you used, copy the syntax, and paste that into MFP.

    Here's more on that:

    Unfortunately, the green check marks in the MFP database are used for both USER-created entries and ADMIN-created entries that MFP pulled from the USDA database. A green check mark for USER-created entries just means enough people have upvoted the entry - it is not necessarily correct.

    To find ADMIN entries for whole foods, I get the syntax from the USDA database and paste that into MFP.

    The USDA changed the platform for their database in 2019 and it is unfortunately a little more difficult to use. I uncheck everything but “SR Legacy” - that seems to be what MFP used to pull in entries.

    Note: any MFP entry that includes "USDA" was USER entered.

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