As it stands the recipe function is useless for accurate tracking

The_Real_Redding

As it stands, Cronometers is useless for accurate tracking with recipes.

I’m long time MFP user and the way it does recipes you are able to accurately track the nutrition facts for a portion of your recipe. How you do it is that you add your ingredients and cook up your meal. After cooking your weight the entire recipe and enter the weight into the “Number of Servings” section. MFP just divides the total nutrition by the number of serving (the weight of the cooked recipe) so when you go to eat a portion, you just enter the weight of the portion you are gonna eat and you get an accurate report.

I thought Cronometer did the same thing, but if it’s suppose to, it’s calculations are off. I created a recipe and tried entering it into my diary but it was off by quite a bit. The portion was 68% of the total recipe but Cronometer only reported 38% of the nutrition facts. As it stands, because of this you are not able to accurately track a recipe which is a huge hit against an app that prides itself on accuracy.

to show you what I’m talking about I recorded creating the recipe and entering it into my diary.

https://imgur.com/a/6UU77ek

Hilary

I see you have set 1 serving per recipe. This means, you can then enter your portion of that 'serving' as your serving. so if you ate 1/2 of your recipe, add 0.5 serving to your diary. Let me know if this does not resolve the problem!

The_Real_Redding

@Hilary Sorry, I guess there’s a misunderstanding. To accurately get a nutritional value for each portion, I weight it. So say that the whole recipe after cooking weights 1000g I will enter 1000 servings in the “Serving Per Recipe”. That way I can weigh the portion I’m gonna eat, say it’s 212g, and enter the weight as the number of servings.

this works perfectly with MFP, owner Cronometer doesn’t seem to be set up to do this properly. As you can see in the video I enter the cooked weight into the number of servings per recipe, but when I go to enter my portion into my diary the only option I have to enter are Full Recipe, Serving-2g, and “g”. None of these were reporting the correct nutrition for the portion I entered.

Hilary

I think I understand. Do you mean that, because the weight changes when you cook the meal, the serving size is then incorrect? If this is the case, you can check out this thread that addresses the issue:
https://forums.cronometer.com/discussion/comment/1722#Comment_1722

The_Real_Redding

@Hilary i must apologize, getting this across in text is kind of difficult. This isn’t a problem with raw weight vs cooked weight or anything like that, it’s a problem with how Cronometer is handling the servings so it will do the math correctly.

So here’s the concept. So you have a recipe that weights a total of 1000g and it’s total calories is 1000. That would mean that each gram would be 1 calories. So if you tell Cronometer that there’s 1000 servings it would take the recipe and divide it’s nutritional data by 1000. You could then weigh your portion, say 200g and enter it as 200 servings. Cronometer would then give you 200 calories for that portion. Nice and simple.

Unfortunately Cronometer isn’t doing this. If you watch the video I entered 142 (the total weight of the cooked recipe) into the “Servings per Recipe” section and saved the recipe. Then I go to enter the number of servings (the weight of my portion) into Cronometer but the only unit options I have are “Full Recipe - 258g”, “Serving - 2g” and “g”. I choose “g” and enter 96. This reports 42 calories which is wrong if 142 servings = 112 calories it should be 76 calories. I then try using the “serving - 2g” unit option and it reports 42 calories as well.

There’s something going on that’s not allowing you to simply enter a number of servings and having Cronometer do the division for you.

I hope I did a better job of explaining it this time.

Hilary

Hi @The_Real_Redding,

From what I am gathering, it sounds like you are hoping Cronometer will allow you to change the cooked weight after you have completed the recipe.

I still don't entirely understand the serving size you have defined - it looks like perhaps you are trying to sefine 1 serving to equal 1 calorie? As it stands currently, I would recommend using a serving size you would typically eat. For instance, if you were to make a dish and plan to share it amongst 4 people, I would recommend setting your servings to '1 Serving' '4 servings per recipe'. This will then portion out the appropriate serving size regardless of the cooked weight.

Unfortunately I think your video is truncated. Would you be able to send a screenshot of the recipe as you are adding it to your diary to indicate the issue as you are adding it?

The_Real_Redding

@Hilary I’m using the weight of the cooked recipe as the serving sizes to make it easier to get as accurate nutritional report as possible for each serving. By weighting the recipe after its cooked and using that weight as the number of servings (1000g = 1000 serving) then all Cronometer has to do is divided all the nutritional data by 1000. Then when you go to figure out your portions nutritional data is enter the weight of the portion as the number of servings (200g = 200 servings).

This makes it easier to batch cook food and still get an accurate nutritional report. Sure, if I’m cooking a dish for my wife and myself I could weight the dish, weigh my portion and figure out how much of the dish I’m eating and enter that as a percentage of the total recipe, but that’s a pain and it’s math people expect apps like Cronometer to do. Also, if you’re batch cooking a large dish to portion out through the week your method would require a lot of extra work on the users side. Much easier to just use the weight of the cooked recipes and the weight of the portions as servings and let Cronometer do all the math.

Karen_Cronometer

Hi The Real Redding,

The software will calculate servings the way you are describing. One thing that might be the issue is that the serving weights are rounded quite a bit in the drop-down menu, so there might be 2 servings showing '1g'.

From your comment: "Then I go to enter the number of servings (the weight of my portion) into Cronometer but the only unit options I have are “Full Recipe - 258g”, “Serving - 2g” and “g”. I choose “g” and enter 96."
This 'g' serving is a default serving calculated by the software for 1 g of the recipe as entered (i.e. this is not based on your defined serving of 142 servings/recipe, but instead 1 g of the uncooked recipe). That means that your 96g serving will equal 96/258 = 37% of the total kcal in the recipe or 0.37 * 112 kcal = 41.7 kcal (this part looks like it's functioning correctly).

In order to use your cooked recipe weight, you need to select your defined serving size (112 kcal /142 servings per recipe = 0.7887 g/serving (this would be rounded to 1g in the drop-down menu). Entering in 96 servings would equal 96 servings * 0.7887 kcal = 75.7 kcal.
If this is the case, I would recommend giving your recipe a name like "servings, cooked" to distinguish it from the generic 'g' serving size more clearly.

Do you know where the 2 g serving size comes from?

Long story, short: if you are seeing something going on with your recipes, we would like to take a look and figure it out. Would you mind emailing us at support@cronometer.com and me know a couple of your recipes?

It's much easier to walkthrough with a real live example.

Cheers,

Resident math nerd

The_Real_Redding

@Karen_Cronometer so Cronometer will always take weight into consideration even when you want to just use servings?

I‘m not sure where the “2g” came from, I never imputes or messed with the “weight based” serving option. I just wanted to tell Cronometer to calculate the total recipe into 142 servings.

Just to let you know that this was working before, this one recipe in the video was the first time where the problem popped up

Karen_Cronometer

Your video appears to be cut-off, as Hilary mentioned, so I wasn't able to check out your recipe.

The software will give the weight of your serving, when it can. There are instances where this will not work, though: If you have added an ingredient to your recipe that has an unknown weight.

The_Real_Redding

@Karen_Cronometer I’ve noticed that it’s totals the weight of the ingredients, but what I was wondering is it’s possible to have Cronometer ignore weight all together and just use the number of servings per recipe to do the math. That’s really the easiest way to do things and allows people to set up a recipe as I’ve explained which makes batch cooking and portioning out the recipe and still get the most accurate report on nutrition.

I actually got that recipe to work, it still says “Serving - 2g” but it now reports the proper calories. I had to enter the number of servings, switch to “weight based serving”, delete the data Chronometer had in “weight based servings” switch back to “Serving based” and then save it.

Karen_Cronometer

You can use the servings based option to define the number of servings per recipe, but you will have to ignore the grams shown since they won't match your prepared recipe weight.

Not sure how that 2g is showing up, but if you want to send it my way in support@cronometer.com and/or if it happens again I would love to take a deeper look.

Cheers,