How can i add this item correctly?

Bear4090t
Bear4090t Posts: 8 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Hi ,
I'm trying to add the uk brand 'Eat Lean' Grated Cheddar' in an amount of 70grams which based on this weight would have 1.4 grams of salt.
I tried scanning the barcode, adding the the item from the database, and adding it manually. When i add it with 1.4g of salt, it comes in my food diary as just 1 gram.
I tried adding other generic items manually with there macros and it doesn't round those ones down, How can i add my cheese with the correct grams of salt with no rounding down?

Answers

  • COGypsy
    COGypsy Posts: 1,331 Member
    I think the issue is that MFP is a US based website that doesn’t use salt measured in grams, it uses sodium measured in milligrams, per US nutrition labels. A tenth of a milligram is too small to measure.
  • Bear4090t
    Bear4090t Posts: 8 Member
    How can i manually input the amount in sodium mg so that i can display it correctly ?
  • mtaratoot
    mtaratoot Posts: 13,973 Member
    Bear4090t wrote: »
    How can i manually input the amount in sodium mg so that i can display it correctly ?

    You have to edit the food entry. It will then be saved in your "My Foods" section. You might need to convert grams to milligrams.

    BUT... the problem is you're not using the right number. I checked the label, and it lists that per 100 grams of that cheese, it contains 2.0 grams of SALT, not sodium. One gram of salt has 388 milligrams of sodium. MyFitnessPal tracks sodium, not salt.

    There are lots of entries in the MFP database for Eat Lean grated cheddar. Only one has sodium listed - and it must be wrong because it says 2 mg.

    You'll have to do some math and edit it for your use if you are tracking sodium. It's a good lesson to check the entries in the database. They are user-sourced, and some aren't correct. Some are not complete, but some are just wrong.

    Good luck.
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,726 Member
    edited May 4
    You can convert salt to sodium with this calculator:
    https://campaigns.heartfoundation.org.au/sodium-and-salt-converter/
  • Bear4090t
    Bear4090t Posts: 8 Member
    You say 1 gram of salt has 388mg sodium, but when i use this heart foundation convertor it tells me it has exactly 400mg of sodium, which is the correct one?
  • Bear4090t
    Bear4090t Posts: 8 Member
    If someone can kindly advise on that?
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,726 Member
    Google informs me of several formulas/ ratios:
    - 'divide by 2.54': this would give a result of 393.7mg of sodium per one gram (1000mg) of salt
    - '39.5% of salt is sodium': this would give a result of 395mg of sodium

    You don't need to be that precise, unless you've got some very serious health issues impacted by sodium intake (and even then, I doubt there are many cases where 10mg makes a difference).
    Heck, you may not even need to mind your salt intake at all (or need a higher intake, like me, because of high blood pressure).
    Personally, I just use the converter I linked to (divides by 2.5), it's close enough and certainly way more accurate than logging the salt weight instead of the sodium weight.

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