Nutrition facts

Tips on deciphering nutritional information in your favorite recipes

Unlike the packaged foods and beverages on supermarket shelves, your favorite recipes may not come with nutrition facts. You might wonder if your favorite recipes are smart choices: How many calories, how much fat and sugar, and what other nutrients are in them?

Becoming an informed home cook is all about knowing where to turn for nutrition facts, which is important for reducing health problems and increasing longevity.

Nutrition facts essentials

Empowering yourself with nutrition know-how is easier when you have the facts in front of you. Before you start calculating, you should understand how to assess nutrition facts:

● Serving size is an ideal place to start. Keep in mind that suggested serving sizes can be smaller than you think. If one cup is a single serving, then the nutrition facts are based on a cup. If you eat two cups, you are getting double the calories, fat, carbs and other nutrients.
● Calories per serving is based on a single serving, not the whole recipe.
● Percent Daily Values (DV) reveal how a recipe affects your total daily diet, based on 2,000 calories a day. (You may need more or less than 2,000 calories a day.) Focus on the percent DV of important nutrients, such as fiber, potassium, vitamin D, calcium and iron. Note: If a recipe provides 5% DV or less of a nutrient, such as sodium, per serving, it’s considered a low-sodium recipe; if it contains 20% DV or more sodium per serving, it’s considered high in sodium.

Nutrition analysis tools

The good news is there are free online nutrition analysis tools for home cooks. The following websites and apps offer nutrition analysis tools that can quickly give you the nutrition facts for your favorite recipes:
RecipeIQ (www.recipeiqapp.com) is a free app that allows you to snap a picture of a printed recipe or paste a link of an online recipe and get the nutrition facts instantly. You can modify recipes to fit your dietary needs or taste preferences and it will recalculate it for you.
Verywell Fit (verywell t.com) is a website with a simple recipe analyzer, which pulls from U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) data and another third-party database for nutrition information. Simply search “recipe nutrition analyzer,” then paste recipe ingredients into the text box, and it quickly calculates the nutrition facts for one serving. You get a printable and downloadable Nutrition Facts label for each recipe.
Whisk (whisk.com) is a website and an app that let you cut and paste recipes or insert a recipe URL and then provide the nutrition facts for one serving. Each recipe has a “Health Score” on a scale of 1 to 10—the higher, the healthier. The scale is based on nutrient density and USDA recommendations.
NutritionData (nutritiondata.self. com) is a website with a built-in recipe analyzer. Once you join the website com- munity, you can create, analyze and save your recipes. It’s free to join.
MyFitnessPal (my tnesspal.com) is a website and app that allow you to track what you eat and drink daily, and they include a recipe analysis tool. A basic membership is free, or you can opt to pay for a premium membership.

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