Instructions

On the recipe analysis page is a simple form into which you will put foods and quantities. The database contains data on commercially available products as well as basic foods. The idea of the this site is that you enter basic ingredients from a recipe and get an analysis of the dish that you make yourself. Sometimes we compare our recipes with the retail version when there is one out of interest. Out of all the research and diet crazes there have been, one thing is for sure: meals you cook yourself are better for you than ready-meals you buy.

Follow this procedure:

1. Into the box type the first food in your recipe. Let say it's a kilo of brisket of beef. So you type 'beef' and click on the View button (or press 'Enter'). The page will present you with a table containing all the foods it knows about that contain the keyword 'beef'. You can put more keywords to get a more focussed collection.
2. Choose the item closest to your ingredient and click on the row it's in. This food will be added to your recipe. This may require a compromise where you choose what you feel is the best fit. For example, there's no pancetta in the database. I put streaky bacon.
   Do you choose raw or cooked food? You should choose a cooked version of the food with a cooking method as close to what's happening in the recipe as possible; notice that the nutritional values in the original database are per 100 grams. When you roast or fry something water is lost so the weight changes. Also, cooking changes the nature of the food and you want values for the food you're going to eat. For an example on the change in eggs click here
   Put the amount in the quantity box (in grams) and choose another food in the same way. (The food selection table will have cleared when you made your choice).
   About those quantities. They have to be in grams. But recipes, while giving you measures in grams for the main items, will use teaspoons (tsp) or tablespoons (tbsp) for smaller items. Or say "4 medium-sized onions". I use, as a rough guide, the fact that a teaspoon of water is 5gm and a tablespoon is 15gm. Oils are lighter than water, 10gm for a tablespoon. Generally you can estimate it. Of course, you could weigh everything exactly; it's an instructive thing to do once but you don't need such accuracy really. The food you're using isn't that consistent anyway.
3. If you change your mind about an ingredient or make a mistake, clicking on the red × will remove that row.
4. When you have built up the whole ingredients list in this way, choose how much information you want:
   • level 1 is for weight management. Calories appear in the results as 'kcal', kilocalories, the official name of calories.
   • level 2 is for health.
   • level 3 is a nutrition information label as you would find on a commercial foodstuff. The RI (Reference Intake) is taken from the British Nutrition Foundation. The actual document is here
   • level 4 is a custom level. You will need to create a cookie with your custom selection before you start building recipes. To do that, go here.
   If you want to see a different analysis it's trivial to click on 'Edit', choose another analysis and select 'Analyse recipe' again.
5. Click on the 'Analyse recipe' button to get the analysis.
6. You will get an analysis page. You can bookmark this page and use it to get to the analysis again. There is also a link at the top, 'Edit'. Clicking on this link will return you to the recipe builder page with all the original values filled in which you can change and re-submit.

The recipe builder page is here