Whether you're counting calories, ensuring you get enough fiber, or watching your sugar intake, knowing the nutrition facts of your homemade recipes is essential. While packaged foods come with handy labels, homemade meals and online recipes require a bit more work. The good news? Calculating nutrition facts for recipes is simpler than you think, and there are plenty of free tools to help.
How to Calculate Recipe Nutrition Manually
Calculating the nutrition content of your recipe is a simple 3 step process. To calculate recipe nutrition: (1) Find the nutrition facts for each ingredient, (2) Sum all nutrients together, (3) Divide by the number of servings.
Step 1 - Get Your Ingredients' Nutrition Facts:
Since we need to add up all of our individual ingredients' nutrients, we first need to find all of our ingredients' information. This may seem like we are working in circles, but it is much easier to find nutrition information for base ingredients than it is for an entire meal! A lot of ingredients will have nutrition labels which will provide you with the information you need. For those ingredients that do not have a label, you can search the USDA food database for nutrition information. Be sure to check the multiple tabs of the USDA search to find what you are looking for!
Pay close attention to serving sizes for ingredients. If the serving size of an ingredient is 2 tbsp and we use 1 cup of it in our recipe, we will need to multiply the ingredient's nutrition information by 8. This accounts both for how much we use in our recipe and for what the nutrition label is telling us about our ingredients.
Step 2 - Sum Nutrition Information:
Now that we have all of our nutrition information, all we have to do is add them together. The sum of all the individual ingredients' nutrients is equal to the recipe's total nutrients! Doing this for every nutrient you need will allow you to determine the nutrition information for the recipe!
Step 3 - Divide by Servings
To determine the nutrition values that an individual would consume, all you have to do is divide the total by the number of servings the recipe made! If a recipe had 2000 calories total and it made 4 servings, each serving was 500 calories.
Example
Now lets walk through an example of calculating the total calories of a simple pasta recipe.
The recipe is as follows:
- 1 lbs pasta
- 2 cups marinara sauce
- 2 tbsp parmesan cheese
Following the first step yields:
- 1 lb pasta - 1688 calories
- 2 cups marinara sauce - 264 calories
- 2 tbsp parmesan cheese - 64 calories
Summing this together shows us the total calories for this recipe is 2016 calories. If this recipe makes 4 servings, each serving will have 504 calories!
3 Best Free Nutrition Calculators
While the math is simple to do on your own, it is very monotonous. Thankfully, there are some great free tools that can help us with these mundane calculations! Here we will dive into three options you can use for calculating a recipe's nutrition, VeryWellFit, Recimate, and MyFitnessPal.
VeryWellFit
VeryWellFit has an easy to use recipe nutrition analyzer. You simply paste your ingredients list into the box, select the number of servings your recipe makes, and click analyze recipe. VeryWellFit will attempt to match your ingredients with their known ingredients and calculate your recipe's nutrition information automatically!
The automatic matching of ingredients to known ingredients can sometimes get it wrong, so be sure to double check that the matched ingredient is what you expect it to be. When using the tool, they provide both what you inputted and what they matched it to making this checking process easy! If needed, you can change the ingredient by clicking the pencil icon on the side. After resolving any issues, you will be able to view your recipe's nutrition information lower on the screen!
Pros:
- Easy to use
- Intuitive UI
Cons:
- Does not remember previous recipes
- Cannot easily share with friends
- Lacks nutrition tracking
Recimate
Recimate is an all in one recipe management service. While they don't have a stand-alone calculator for calculating nutrition values, they do provide nutrition estimates when you create a recipe! Recimate maintains their own ingredient database enabling them to calculate the nutrition information of recipes created on their site.
Creating a recipe is a simple process through Recimate. You can input your ingredients by pasting them, and Recimate will match them to ingredients in their system. Be sure to review the ingredients to ensure they got matched properly. If they didn't, simply click on the ingredient and search for the proper one. If you cannot find the ingredient you are looking for, just type the whole name out. This will let the Recimate team know they need to add that ingredient to their database. Recimate calculates nutrition based on their growing ingredient database, with new ingredients added based on what users are using.
After creating the Recipe, the nutrition information will be found at the bottom of the recipe card. Recimate enables you to effortlessly share your recipes with friends and family, and the nutrition information gets shared as well. For those who frequently cook for their friends, this can be a lifesaver!
Pros:
- Stores your entire recipe, not just nutrients
- Expanding list of ingredients to choose from
- Easily share with friends and family
Cons:
- Using ingredients not in Recimate's database will yield incomplete nutrition information
- No stand alone tool to use
MyFitnessPal
MyFitnessPal has a similar calculator, but they have more than just that. MyFitnessPal allows you to track all of your calories throughout the day with ease! You can keep a log of your food and track your progress to your goals. Most of the time, adding a food is as simple as scanning the barcode on the package, or searching their vast database full of meals others have made!
However, if you do have to create your own recipe, MyFitnessPal lets you save the nutrition information to your account enabling you to not have to recalculate your recipes nutrition information every time you cook it! While I personally prefer the UI of VeryWellFit for calculating my recipe's nutrition information, MyFitnessPal provides a much broader ecosystem for tracking your nutrient intake.
Pros:
- Great for tracking nutrients throughout the day
- Numerous user made meals which may suit your needs
- Remembers previously created meals
Cons:
- Harder to use
- User added ingredients lack smaller nutrients like vitamins and minerals
Frequently Asked Questions
How accurate are recipe nutrition calculators?
Recipe nutrition calculators can be very accurate! Some factors that impact their precision are:
- Variations in the measurements of ingredients
- Serving smaller/larger portions than the serving size suggests
- Lacking information about specific ingredients
Do I need to weigh my ingredients?
You do not need to weigh your ingredients! Lots of calculators contain nutrition information for ingredients based on weight but also on volumetric measurements like tablespoons or cups. However, if accuracy of your nutrition information is important, you may consider weighing your ingredients as this can be a more reliable way to measure.
What if an ingredient is not in the database?
Different recipe nutrition calculators handle this differently. VeryWellFit will not allow you to use an ingredient that they don't have in their database, so you never have to worry about that. Recimate will allow you to use ingredients that are not in their database; The ingredient will be flagged and added to their queue, though it won't be included in the initial nutrition calculation.
Start Calculating Your Recipe Nutrition Today
For quick, one-time calculations: VeryWellFit offers the fastest way to get nutrition facts without an account.
For comprehensive daily tracking: MyFitnessPal excels at monitoring your overall calorie and nutrient intake.
For complete recipe management with nutrition: Recimate combines recipe storage, automatic nutrition calculations, and recipe sharing all in one platform! Store your favorite recipes, share them with friends and family, and track nutrition all while building your personal cookbook.
Ready to organize your recipes and master your home cooking? Sign up for Recimate free today and get instant nutrition calculations for all your recipes.