Analyze your recipes accurately

Here are some tips that can help you make your diet and recipe analysis more accurate.

Choose ingredients and quantities carefully

A recipe calls for 1 pound of ground beef. The meat is browned, the fat is drained off, and the meat is added to the recipe. For your analysis, should you input one pound of raw ground beef or one pound of cooked ground beef?  Neither. 

Selecting one pound of raw ground beef will overestimate the fat content of the recipe because it includes the fat which is drained off and not consumed.  But entering one pound of browned beef will overestimate the amount of protein in the finished recipe.  Why?  Because one pound of raw ground beef only yields 2/3 of a pound of cooked beef.  The most accurate entry for this example would be 2/3 of a pound (280g) of browned beef.

Next, the recipe calls for a 15-ounce can of kidney beans, drained.  So you find the listing for kidney beans and click "15 ounces."  But if you take a 15-ounce can of kidney beans and drain it, you only have 10 ounces of beans.  Your analysis will be overstating the amount of protein, carbohydrates, fiber, and calories in the dish.

Be careful converting volume to weight

Most recipes give ingredients in volume measurements (cups, teaspoons, etc.) but most ingredients are analyzed by weight (ounces or grams).  In order to get an accurate analysis, you have to be able to accurately convert volume to weight, and the equation changes from food to food.  One cup of water weighs almost twice as much (237g) as one cup of flour (125g).

For example, I was recently reviewing a professional analysis of a recipe calling for 1/4 cup of chopped peanuts.  One cup equals 8 fluid ounces, so the analyst calculated that 1/4 cup  of peanuts would equal 2 ounces. But peanuts are not fluid and, in fact, a quarter cup of peanuts weighs only 1 ounce.  As a result of this error,  the analysis significantly overstated the fat and calorie content of the recipe.

All of the nutrient info here on Nutrition Data is based on weight measures, but volume equivalents are provided for many ingredients.  A good kitchen scale is also a big help.

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