Nutritional information provided by MFP reliable?

I always verify ingredient accuracy and calories from online sites.

I very seldom find one that’s accurate, or didn’t fail to include the syrup dousing in the photos, or the “you may want extra sugar” n the photos, or the generous layer of nuts not included in the recipe, but there in the photos.

It’s maddening.

IMHO recipe sites, especially those touting “diet friendly” or “low cal”, tend to be the worst culprits. Anything to get those clicks.

Even the few MFP tecupes I’ve tried aren’t very accurate.

The onus is on you to make sure what you’re eating is what you think you’re eating.

I’ve had the best luck taking family favorites and rethinking “how can I make these more calorie efficient?”

I’ve found I can often cut sugar or butter by half, eliminate greasing pans, use an air fryer with a Misto olive oil sprayer in lieu of tablespoons of oil, and so on. I cut the calories in my pecan chicken a ton by using ground pecan meal instead of pecan chips. Get creative.

Not exactly. The food database is crowd-sourced, and many of our fellow users have put incorrect information into that database. Find and log a correct entry. The eggs I log have one-egg nutrition, not one-cup-of-eggs nutrition. If the entry you chose defaulted to a one-cup serving size, check the serving size drop-down: There may be other options you could pick even for that same database entry.

Bar coded entries aren't necessarily more accurate than any other entries. It's just what was entered by the first person - regular MFP user - who scanned that bar code. Bar codes aren't a direct pipeline to current, accurate information from the food producer.

avoid certain listings. When’s the last time you measured eggs as “1 cup”? 

Here's a thing, though: A number of of the entries whose default quantity is cups, but for which cups are dumb, are actual USDA data from MFP's initial data load at start up.

When they are, they have different types of servings in the drop-down: Weights, volumes, inch measurements, sometimes even counts (for things like nuts and berries). The data is accurate, except for a few truly weird, easily identified outliers in individual sizes within a few of those entries that are rumored to have come from a database conversion at some point in the past..

I actually prefer to find those entries. Once logged in grams, the drop-down defaults to grams in my recent/frequent foods, but all other options are still available in that one entry.

Any entry that says "USDA" in the title isn't direct from USDA. It's user-entered. The actual USDA entries from the MFP initial load are usually identifiable from the different measurement types in the drop down, often that dumb 1-cup default serving even for things where that's goofy, no manufacturer designated, and often a name/title only a bureaucrat could love ("Tomatoes, red, ripe raw, year round average", "Chicken, broiler or fryers, breast, skinless, boneless, meat only, raw").

I never use the drop down boxes after seeing some weird mathematical inconsistencies doing so early on when converting things via the drop down box

I look for entries that are already in the database in grams.

Maybe it was a short term glitch, but I’ve never bothered to go back and check, esp after Goodwilling all my measuring cups and spoons.

Golly, as a “Boomer” (hate that word!), I never thought I’d be all in on metric. But here we are. 🤷🏻‍♀️

@springlering62

"Golly, as a “Boomer” (hate that word!), I never thought I’d be all in on metric. But here we are. 🤷🏻‍♀️"

You're becoming a European! Or just a citizen of the World (I know you travel a lot)