Smarter Eats: Analyze Your Recipe With Calorie Count

Knowledge is power. Now you can take those recipes you have followed for years and learn how they stack up nutritionally.

Calorie Count has a great recipe analyzer. It's simple to use — mostly just cutting and pasting — and you can find out how many calories those holiday cookies really contain.

For a short tutorial on how the recipe analysis tool works, read more.

It's so easy. Here's how to analyze your recipes.

1. Once you're on the Calorie Count website, under the Food tab click New Recipe option.
2. Enter all the ingredients into the recipe. You can cut and paste if the ingredient is online or in some electronic form — so easy. If the recipe says it makes between eight and 10 servings, go for the middle number and type nine in the box. Click on the orange Analyze Recipe button under the ingredient box.
   
3. If the analyzer doesn't recognize an ingredient or can't compute a measurement, it will flag that line. I have found you must enter eggs and egg whites on separate lines and you must write a specific amount for each ingredient — "1 to 2 tablespoons" is too gray for the system. So once again find some middle ground and type in "1.5 tablespoons." Click the Analyze Recipe button a second time.
   
4. When all the ingredients are flagged green, the information in the standard nutrition data format will be correct. If you find your recipe too high in fat, sugar, salt, or calories, you can begin to play with your recipe and see how substitutions will affect the nutritional quality of your recipe. As for taste, you will just heed to see how your experiments work. To save the recipe on the site, you do need to be a member. Registering is easy and free.

What recipe are you going to analyze first?

Source: Flickr User Muffet