How to Determine the Nutrient Profile of Home Made Meals

Screen Shot 2013-11-25 at 2.21.16 PMOne of the questions I get pretty regularly is “How can I determine the nutrition information of recipes I make at home?” When you’re trying to lose weight or build muscle, or working to ensure you’re giving your body the protein and vitamins and minerals it needs to thrive, knowing the protein, nutrient and calorie content of your meals can be super helpful. But cooking at home using whole foods can make it trickier, as whole foods don’t come with a nutrition label! There is a way to figure out all these values, and with the right tools and tricks it’s not too complicated.

The first few times you do this will be a learning process – expect imperfection. But you’ll get the hang of it quickly. Hang in there!

You’ll need two tools to get an accurate idea of the nutrient profile of your recipes. First, you’ll need to find a recipe analyzer you feel comfortable with. There are dozens available online. I would say they’re all pretty comparable, so check out a few and get a feel for which one seems most user friendly to you. I use this one at Calorie Count. Many of my clients use this one at MyFitnessPal. Spark People has a good one, as does Self Magazine. Here’s one from Fit Watch. Dieticians of Canada also has a good one. Some of these analyzers require you to create an account, but the accounts are free. The benefit of creating an account, though, is that you can save your recipes for future reference and only need to analyze them once.

You’ll also need a decent food scale (I like this one, although there are many to choose from at different price points).

And now that we’ve got the tools, here’s how you do it:

1. Enter all the ingredients of your recipe into the recipe analyzer of your choice, and tell the analyzer how many servings the finished product will produce. The analyzer will give you the nutrient profile for a serving of your recipe.

2. Prepare the recipe.

3. Weigh the entire finished recipe. Make sure to subtract the weight of the container you’re using to weigh the recipe. You can do this by weighing the empty container before weighing the recipe, or if your scale has a tare function, simply place the container on the scale and press the tare button to zero out the weight reading, then add the finished recipe to the container and the scale will read only the weight of the food.

4. Divide the finished product into servings by weight.

Here’s an example:

Our imaginary example dish is going to be beans and rice. Enter all the ingredients into the analyzer, in this case we’ll enter 2 cups uncooked rice, 1 cup dry beans, 3 carrots, 3 stalks of celery, 2 large tomatoes, a tablespoon of olive oil and a teaspoon of salt (we’re going for simple here). Then we tell the analyzer this recipe makes 4 servings. The analyzer will make it’s calculations and spit out the nutrient profile for one serving. Then, we prepare the recipe. When the recipe is finished, we place the entire dish on the food scale. After figuring out and subtracting the weight of the container the food is in, we determine the finished recipe weighs 36 ounces. We then divide the recipe into 4 equal 9 ounce servings, and either serve and eat, or package up for later. Viola! Home made meal, accurately profiled and divided. You now know your home made meal’s macronutrient, micronutrient and calorie profile.

One benefit of determining the nutrient profile of your recipes is that you can see if they are balanced to meet your goals, and if not, you can alter them. For instance, this beans and rice recipe may be too low in protein for someone on a fat loss diet, so seeing where the protein is coming from can give them ideas for improving the protein balance (perhaps by increasing the bean to rice ratio, or adding another protein dense ingredient). You can also determine if your recipe is calorie dense enough to meet your energy needs, or if it lacks micronutrients you may need to increase your consumption of. Remember, being aware of the nutrient profile of your diet IS NOT and SHOULD NOT be about restriction, it should be about ensuring you are meeting your nutrient and energy (calorie) needs adequately. Spending some time learning about the way your diet balances out over time can help you create new eating habits. Once those habits are in place, you can leave the tracking behind.

Related blog posts:

Calorie Primer
Habit: the Real Key to Weight Loss Success
Body Composition


eMeals Meal Plans

My Pissed Off Low-Carb Rant

 

I’m not a scientist, I’m a lowly little Personal Trainer and Massage Therapist. I don’t perform studies (other than my N of 1 ones), I don’t write research papers, I don’t have a degree in anything health related.

What I do do is read a lot. Blogs (I’ve got a few of them listed in my blogroll), news articles, and most importantly, science. I try to find and read as many sides of an issue as possible.

And one thing I have, that a lot of people don’t, is an ability to think critically.

There’s a Diet War going on out there. One faction would have you believe that primitive man spent most of his time lolling about the savannah, working on his tan, only getting up off his ass long enough to throw a spear at a passing buffalo, then sitting back down to gorge himself and get back to the serious business of lazing about. Sounds pretty idyllic. Sign me up! Oh yeah, and that buffalo was made out of bacon.

Building on this belief system, they argue that modern humans are therefore primed for a life of blogging and bacon eating. It’s the true path to optimal health! See, our bodies are made to sit and eat fat, so when we eat carbohydrates, everything goes haywire. Insulin resistance, diabetes, obesity, cancer, DEATH.

‘Course, there’s all that pesky scientific data that suggests that increasing physical activity improves metabolic function (don’t believe me? Google ‘exercise and insulin resistance’, or check out my pinterest board on the topic). How can that be, if the body’s natural state is lolling about the savannah? If our bodies are designed to sit, why would moving improve metabolic function?

Do you REALLY believe primitive man spent most of his time on his ass? I don’t, not for a minute. I believe primitive man spent most of his time on the move. I believe the human body’s natural state is one of almost constant motion. When we move, we metabolize carbohydrate just fine. In fact, science holds carbohydrate is the brain and muscles’ preferred fuel (yep, I’m aware of the studies that suggest otherwise. Guess what? So far, they’re outliers). ‘Course, if we’re not moving, carbs can cause problems. But is eliminating carbs the answer? Only if you believe our bodies are designed to sit all day. If you believe that our bodies are designed to move, then eliminating carbs is a band-aid. A band-aid that might allow you to sit on your ass a few more years before disease sets in, but that ultimately doesn’t address the CAUSE of the disease: exercise deficiency. That’s right folks, I’m calling it like I see it: Metabolic Dysfunction is a disease of exercise deficiency, not of carb intolerance.

“But modern lifestyles make adequate exercise nearly impossible!” they claim. Bullshit. I have kids, a job, a household to manage, and a social life, and I am able to include adequate exercise into my daily routine. I also manage to maintain a blog! Yes, you too can blog AND exercise.

“But only young people and endurance athletes can eat carbs safely!” they counter. Bullshit, again. I’m 40. I exercise 30 minutes a day on average.

“But…but…some of us are so damaged by obesity and the Standard American Diet that we simply can’t ever eat carbs again!”. Bullshit, times 3. I was obese for 3 decades. At 35, I had a whole laundry list of metabolic issues: PCOS, high blood pressure, blood sugar regulation control problems, low HDL, and obesity (not to mention depression, panic attacks, migraines, hair loss, cyctic breasts and acne and much, much more). I reversed it ALL while eating carbs.

Ask yourself: which is more likely the natural state of the human body:
a. sitting and eating only one or two macronutrients, to the exclusion of thousands of edible energy sources
b. moving and eating whatever is easiest to find (which, where I live, would be mostly plants, with some rodents, insects and perhaps an occasional bit of larger game thrown in to supplement)

I choose b, and live accordingly (minus the rodents and insects). And you’ve seen my pictures. I suspect I look a lot more like the mythical Grok(ette) than most basement dwelling, bacon eating bloggers.