Is there a way to change the weight of the automated 'full recipe' serving on custom recipes?

Cheskaz

So I understand that the way it is done by default is more accurate for nutrients and that I'm meant to use the entries for cooked food, rather than raw to properly reflect the nutrient breakdown during cooking. However, I'm the kind of scrub who really only cares about calories, and not being able to manually enter the final weight of the recipe just slightly bothers me. Truly, how do I manage to get through the day with these huge, first world problems? /s

So basically, is there any way to manually alter the weight of the full recipe, or even straight up delete it?

Thanks a lot!

Karen_Cronometer

Hello Cheskaz,

We calculate the weight of the recipe automatically from the ingredients that you add. For that reason, you cannot edit the weight of a recipe.

When you create your recipe, you can change the calculation to servings based, rather than weight based. Then enter the number of servings per recipe. We will then calculate the weight of a serving by dividing the total recipe by the number of servings. You will still see the weight of a serving, but you don't have to worry about weighing out each portion, if that's not your style.

You can also change your current recipes to servings based by opening the recipe in the Foods tab. Select the gear icon to Edit a Copy. In the copy, you will have the option to choose serving based again.

Best,

eric9360

For a custom recipe, I find the number of portions allocated to be quite inaccurate. I'd much rather go by actual weight in grams. The problem is, for example, when making a stew, is that the weight Cron calculates is often much different than the actual weigh of the food. For example, in a stew, lots of water boils off so the actual food weighs less than the Cron weight, so entering the number of grams of stew on your plate is inaccurate. SOLUTION-weigh your final recipe food-that is, the entire amount of final cooked food in your pot. If it is less then the Cron weight, add a dummy entry in the recipe for X grams of water so your real-world final or total weight = Cron weight. If your real-world recipe weighs more then the Cron weight, add a dummy entry in the recipe for (- X) grams of water so your real-world weight = cron weight. Yes, you can enter a negative weight and the math works. So once the actual weight of your entire recipe equals the calculated cron weight, all you need to do is enter the actual grams of food on you plate for the recipe, and cron will allocate the proper calories, fat, protein and carbs etc. However, this doesn't account for nutrient loss etc cause by the differences in water/evaporation etc.

Hilary

Hey @eric9360 it sounds like you've got a pretty good system going using the negative water content! Have you tried setting your recipe to servings based? It sounds like it could be more usable for your purposes!

eric9360

Yes I have dealt with the "number of servings" approach but note it is fairly inaccurate to estimate the total number of servings in a pot of food, if it is more than, say, four servings. This gets very inaccurate if you make a stew or soup, for example, in a 6 quart pot, that perhaps weighs in at 2600 grams (of food, not the pot). If you estimate that the pot of food represents 20 servings, good luck estimating when you eat one serving without weighing it. I find it much more accurate (and easier) to weigh the exact number of grams one is consuming. The only extra effort involved in this approach is to add a dummy entry of water, either positive or negative, so that the Cron-estimated weight equals the real-world weight of the recipe. That said, I'm a bit of a techy and math-guy, so I understand that this approach may not be for everyone.

Hilary

@eric9360 yeah this is a bit of a tricky one. There really is no way to accurately track the nutrients in a mixed, cooked dish, because water is not necessarily the only thing that is changed when cooking foods. Your method is a pretty good way to do it though, I think!

eric9360

I agree, but it would be way too complex to track the loss of nutrients during cooking, as it would depend on cooking time, heat, the type of food, and even elevation. Yes it could be done in a lab for one dish, but most likely not by Cron. I don't think it really matters all that much anyway. I think it's more important to simply to track protein/carb/fat fairly accurately based on the weight of the food one eats, and live with just getting a basic idea of the nutrient levels involved. "Ain't no perfect way"

defnac

Hey Eric, I just want to say that your idea saved my life and I can now cook for a couples of days and a good estimate. I know this is two years later, but thank you brother.

RogerMoxswana

BEST SOLUTION: If you don't want to mess up your water data, instead of adding water to a recipe to adjust the weight of the final recipe, add a completely empty ingredient, name it "weight adjustment", make serving size 1 gram, and whalah, you can add or subtract from the final weight however you want.

There is actually an ingredient in the database called "test" something or other that has no nutrition data in it. So make a copy of that, rename it, make sure to set serving size to 1g, and then you can add it to the end of all your recipes to adjust the weight.

jefmcg

https://forums.cronometer.com/discussion/comment/15726#Comment_15726

The missing weight in the cooked food would be evaporation, so negative water does not mess up your water data, it fixes it.

RogerMoxswana

@jefmcg I'd say there are probably two factors that make subtracting water inaccurate.

1. The amount of water in the ingredients in the various databases is likely not accurate.

2. Other things, such as alcohol or rendered fat end up being lost during the cooking process as well. Honestly, there are a bunch of complex chemical changes that go on when cooking (that I don't understand), so there might be a lot of contributing factors.

Either way, the water amounts in ingredients don't line up with the amount of weight that is lost through cooking. So for someone tracking their water intake (especially not just through food), entering negative water amounts will end up messing up their data.

For instance I just made homemade sausages, which according to cronometer have 3.2g of water per sausage before cooking. But after cooking, they're down by over 10g per sausage. Even for something like potato hash which has no animal fat, I think my last recipe had several hundred grams lost even though the total amount of water was listed at only 70g. So something else is going on there.