Creating Recipes in My Fitness Pal

If you are getting it from another site don't add anything just copy & paste the website and when you want that recipe it will bring you back to that website. If your copying your own recipes then yes it can be a challenge, it's all in the wording for example once I put in egg whites and I knew it was wrong so I put in the kind of egg whites, I got from a carton and that came out right. Hope this helps. I have no idea how to encourage them to do more, we have tried but the response is you can put your own info in your diary and then just pick from that which I have done a lot because our counts in Canada are different than the States just today I put in brown rice and the count was quite a bit lower than what my box said so I checked again and it seems that the rice in the States is 43 g. to 1/2 cup here it is 50 g. to half a cup. Hopefully you will get the hang of it.

I hope you know that you can edit (replace) a single ingredient in the recipe, at the point when it gives you the list of matched items? (Or do it later, in recipe edit.)

On the phone/tablet version of MFP, it should be fairly obvious how to do this, but if not, say so and I'll try to give more detailed info.

On web MFP, it's almost completely nonobvious how to do this. When it gives you the matched list, you need to hover your cursor over to the right of the ingredient you want to change/replace. When you do that, you should be able to find an otherwise-hidden set of options: "Edit Quantity" "Replace" "Remove".

The "Replace" option gives you a search box, so you can find an entry you like better. Usually it's a good idea to use a more specific search term (like "whole wheat flour" instead of "flour" or a brand name). If you change the search term to a synonym, you'll get different search results, until you find a replacement ingredient that's more accurate.

I used the MFP function today for the 1st time and am very disappointed in it. It did not count the sodium in a recipe correcctly at all. It also made errors on the carbs which are the 2 most important numbers I need. I can see others have similar issues. I have been using myfitness for quite some time but this is a very poor process Very disappointed in it.

penguinmama87 wrote: »

grandmajojo421 wrote: »

I used the MFP function today for the 1st time and am very disappointed in it. It did not count the sodium in a recipe correcctly at all. It also made errors on the carbs which are the 2 most important numbers I need. I can see others have similar issues. I have been using myfitness for quite some time but this is a very poor process Very disappointed in it.

I would recheck the ingredients - sometimes it can pull odd or incorrect entries, but you can "replace ingredient" with the correct ones. I like to cross-check with the USDA's Food Data Central (any items listed under the "SR Legacy" tab have entries in the MFP database.)

Absolutely! I sanity check every single ingredient when I import a recipe, replacing almost all of them with the brand (or supermarket name for fresh goods) checking the nutritional info is as complete as possible - there are limitations based on where in the world you live, as to what is listed on nutrition panels on goods.

The Recipe builder tool is as accurate as you choose to make it. Well worth the time taken the first time you build your recipe, as it ensures the most accurate results thereafter when you make the dish again - remember to edit with precise gram weights when remaking for best possible results. Not all onions weigh the same, for example!

drana325 wrote: »

Yeah. I was entering ingredients for my instant pot chicken curry. I put cloves as an Ingredient. I only use 4. For a weeks worth. It calculated 4000 calories for it. It kept picking up something about ground cloves. Then I tried cloves-spice…picked up on garlic cloves. I got a little annoyed and looked up patel bros cloves…and tried writing Lavang which is what we call it in my language. Nothing. At most a clove is 2 calories. NOT EVEN. So I tried to replace it with black pepper corn. Lol. Nnnope. Apparently whole black pepper corns aren’t ingredients.

So finally replaced both black pepper corn and cloves with cinnamon stick. Granted cinnamon sticks have way more calories than black pepper and cloves. But I’ll be damned…calorie count was far less than 4000.

Next time try searching for ‘whole cloves’ - seems to bring up the right entries. 😊

Also, ‘black peppercorns’ brings up a number of correct entries. I didn’t try searching them as ‘pepper corns’ but it doesn’t surprise me if that doesn’t work so well! 🤷‍♀️