As with all aspects of “food as medicine” I am not an expert, just a cook; speak with a professional dietitian, nutritionist or doctor before moving to any diet to make sure you stay healthy.
My DIET listing is a suggestion of how the food fits into the diets my friends have, you should ALWAYS verify and not take my word on these diets.
Additionally, my NUTRITION listing is my best guess at totals; if your health depends upon nutrition counting please verify any counts on my website yourself. Keep yourself healthy and safe, if it matters, verify.
Nutrition: Remember that everything, almost, has some kind of nutritional value and this includes the pinch of herbs or the quick spray of oil. Often recipes have “hidden” calories because people forget to count everything that is used in a recipe (“oh it is just parsley”).
Nutritional Comments: Sometimes there will be a comment added to the bottom of recipes of what you can add to the recipe or alternatives you can use — I do this too — but people often forget to adjust the nutritional counts from those additions or changes.
Nutrition Sources: I use fatsecret.com and nutritionix to calculate the calories, carbs, protein, and fiber of individual food items. If it does not have the food I am using, I turn to the producers site, food packaging, or search on line for a generic, but reputable, source such as USDA.
Why list by ingredients? In my recipes, I list the nutrition numbers by ingredient so you can easily confirm my numbers with your own calorie source, or change the numbers should you adjust the recipe. Then all that is needed is to add up all the ingredient’s calories, divide by the number of servings, and you get the amount of calories per serving.
All nutritional counts must be seen as approximate. We rarely follow recipes 100%, the fruits and veggies I use will not match the size or weight of the ones you bought or grew. I could have transposed numbers or my fingers entered the numbers wrong on the calculator. If the number matter to you or your health, please verify them yourself.
What nutrition do I list?
- C = calories
- K = carbohydrates measured in grams
- P = protein measured in grams
- F = fiber measured in grams
- S = sodium measured in milligrams
Calculation: The hardest thing to this process is adjusting the nutrient measurements to the amount you are actually using. The nutrition may be for 100g but you are using ounces, or the nutrition is given per tablespoon and you need a cup. So I spend time converting measurements so the nutrition information will be as accurate as I can possibly make them.
- Fatsecret reports Chia seeds 1T = 60c
- But recipe calls for 2t Chia seeds
- Since 1T = 3t, divide 60c by 3 = 20c per teaspoon
- Times 20c by 2 = 40c for 2 teaspoons of Chia seeds
Serving Size: Serving size is really a mixture of how many servings I can reasonably make from the dish, including a consideration of the amount of food considered a serving. But this is self controlling, you can always increase or decrease calories per serving by simply changing your serving size. For instance I cut the loaf of bread into 12 slices but you may cut it into 10 slices, thereby changing the calories per slice.
Individual Serving Size: These are generally government, such as USDA (1) recommended amounts of food per individual serving. Below is a small sampling of their recommendations, also WebMD has a great graphic on portion size that is helpful when you need to guess, like in a restaurant.
Meat and Fish serving size = 3oz
Pasta and Rice serving size = 1/2C
Veggie = 1C
Fruit = 1 fruit (I am thinking apple, not pineapple here!) or 1/2C chopped
Bread = 1 slice