Recipe & Food Basics - Tips & Tricks Topic

Dietitian 05/25/18
Let's share tips and tricks we have for finding or entering foods and recipes in this topic.

I enter a lot of recipes so here are my tips I would like to share with others:

- This post on recipes will be helpful: https://www.mynetdiary.com/tips-for-accurate-recipes.html

- The most accurate custom recipes are those where you use measured ingredients and total yield of the recipe (vs. guessing).

- You can overwrite the recipe weight with your measured weight value - use grams. Digital kitchen scales are not very expensive - you can get a good one for less than $30 and it will last for years. I strongly recommend that you do this if you enter a lot of custom recipes. You only have to measure once if you make the recipe the same way each time. When you enter a total recipe weight value that is lower than the system's calculated weight, it takes off water weight for the shrinkage. This will make the calories and nutrient content more accurate if you log portions by weight. This helps you avoid underestimating calories intake.

- The most complete nutrient totals for your recipe will come from using basic generic ingredients as much as possible. Remember, packaged foods are only required to list about 12 nutrients, so all other nutrients are likely missing from the label (and therefore, showing a lower nutrient total than actual). You can learn more about finding and logging basic foods in this post: https://www.mynetdiary.com/4-tips-for-searching-finding-basic-food-items.html

- For more basic info about food logging (and how to update foods), see this post: https://www.mynetdiary.com/more-tips-for-food-logging.html

- Before I log a custom recipe, I make it first, with measured ingredients and total yield first. This saves me a lot of time. Then I enter the recipe with my notes in hand after the meal while the details are still fresh.

- Personally, I find it a lot easier to enter a new custom recipe in the web program first so that I can see everything at a glance. But all apps allow you to enter custom recipes.

- If you used to make a recipe a certain way and then change it significantly (e.g. diff protein source, a lot less sodium, etc), then in my opinion, it is best to use the "copy & customize" feature in web program so that you can make changes, rename it, and then have the new recipe for your use going forward (and you know it is the new version). This will help you avoid confusion as to why the same recipe was x calories in January vs. y calories in June.

Don't want to enter custom recipes?
That is okay, but learn how to find basic or generic recipes in the database. You can learn how to do this in my recent post on tracking with Chronic Kidney Disease: https://www.mynetdiary.com/tips-for-tracking-with-mynetdiary-when-you-have-chronic-kidney-disease.html

Here is a copy & paste of section from that post:

"...You can find these basic recipes if you include "from recipe" along with other keywords in your food item search. If that doesn't bring up the item you were looking for, then try including "home prepared" or "home recipe." MyNetDiary will be improving these USDA names so that "homemade" will bring up all of these basic recipes.

I was surprised to learn that there are a number of popular Chinese-American restaurant dishes with complete nutrition information already in MyNetDiary. You can find all 20 of these dishes by including "restaurant Chinese" in your food item search.

If you include "fast foods" in your food item search, you will bring up a large number of basic fast food items with more complete nutrient data than what you might find on the restaurant's website.

If you dine at fast food or fast casual chain restaurants often, try contacting the restaurant chain for more nutrient information. The restaurant's website will typically have a contact number or email."

Another tip: I often include "whole foods" in my food item name search if I am logging a restaurant meal (that isn't from a chain restaurant). There are a ton of Whole Foods entrees and appetizers in the database and the nutritional content looks pretty accurate to me. When I log one of these items, I am less likely to underestimate the calories and sodium content than if I tried to guess.

Okay, those are the biggies. Hope these tips are helpful!
Thanks,
Kathy (Dietitian)

Recipe & Food Basics - Tips & Tricks