Nutrition: Cooked Vs. Uncooked
When using your software and adding your own recipes does the software take into consideration the change in calories of the actual cooking process.
Crazy question, example you list a recipe with onions, but then you cook the onions in olive oil, you have put both ingredients, onion and olive oil into your database but doesn't the actual cooking of foods change calories due to breaking down certain things? Again, that is just an example, and I need to know if there is some sort of conversion chart within the program or how that would work. I appreciate your help. Thank you.
Patty Caron
Hi Patty,
The nutritional information in Cook'n is entered directly from the nutrition labels at the store. Thus, canned carrots will show the nutritional info available on "cooked" carrots, while raw carrots would show that information for fresh. If the manufacturers of the food specified a difference, that is what would show up in the Cook'n database.
Nutrition information is to be solely a guide. There are so many factors that never get called into play when it comes to these labels. The field the produce was harvested in, the time of harvest, the chemicals used to grow the crops and their life in the field, the transportation or storage conditions of the produce, etc - these all affect the nutritional content of our food, let alone the cooking of the food. So much of our government database on nutrition was made back in the forties and fifties. Since then the fertility and health of our fields has declined leading to a loss of nutrients in the food we eat. With that said, I recommend that we all use the nutrition facts as a guide only. They are never accurate; they are merely an estimate of what we actually may be eating.
For your needs, it is simple to update nutritional information in Cook'n if you find more updated or accurate information than what is available through manufacturer's labels.
Hope this helps,
Desiri Wightman, R.D.
Registered Dietitian
