
Adding Your Own Items to the Nutrition Database
Sometimes you'll find that the USDA hasn't defined values or weights for an ingredient that
your recipe uses. You might, however, have the nutritional information from the package
available to you. In these instances, you can add new items to your database for these
ingredients, and then make mappings to them just like you make mappings to the default
USDA items that come with Nutrition.
Adding a New Nutritional Item
To add a new item:
- Choose Nutrition > Add Item or press the "New Item" button in the toolbar.
This will open a window that allows you to add information commonly found on product
packages in the "Nutrition Facts" box for your item.
After filling in the name for your item and choosing the group it belongs too, you must fill
in the "Serving Size" and "Weight" fields for your item. It's best to enter the size in as
clear a manner as possible. For instance, as "1 cup" or "1 tablespoon."
At times you might have to do your own conversion for your item to work properly. An example
of this is when you want to enter the information for "1 can cream of chicken soup." The USDA
doesn't offer a weight for 1 can, so you'd have to enter your own item, unless you're willing
to convert your ingredient into cups. Unfortunately, when you look at the can you find it lists
the amount for 1 cup in milliliters, not in grams, and your item weight has to be entered in
grams. To solve this problem, you can find, by doing a search in the nutrition database, that
the USDA does provide a measurement for the soup you are using of 124g for each 1/2 cup.
The soup can lists that there are 2.5 1/2 cup servings in each can, so you can then fill in
"1 can" for your Serving Size, and 310g for your Weight (124g x 2.5 = 310g). Now, if you map
your soup ingredient to your nutritional item, you can do your calculation correctly when your
ingredient is in cans.
To show just your added items, right-mouse-click or control-mouse click on the table, and
choose "Show Only My Items" from the menu that pops up.
Deleting Nutritional Items You Have Added
To delete a nutritional item that you've added to the database:
- Select the item, then choose Nutrition > Delete Item or press the "Delete Item" button in the toolbar.
Note that you can only delete items that you've added.