If you cook a big batch of something but need to know the nutritional information for a specific serving, here’s how to work it out using a spreadsheet. This method is based my own process of counting calories.
Tools
- a heat resistant mat
- digital weighing scales with a 1g increments and a zero feature
- pad and pen
- spreadsheet software
1) Place your heat mat on your scales and zero
2) Weigh the pan you will cook and make a note – in this example, my pan is 591g
3) Remove and use the pan to cook with. However, before you add each food item to the pan, weigh it and make a note of it on the pad.
In this example recipe, I made the following notes while I was cooking:
- 45ml balsamic
- 158g red pepper
- 240g chickpeas (100g = 109 cal, 15.5 ca, 6.6g pro, 2.3g fat, 4.8g fi)
- 21g red chilli
- 2 tsp dried mint
- 30ml orange juice (100ml = 42 cal, 0.5g pro, 9.1g ca, 0.1g fat. 0.1g fibr)
4) After your food is cooked, reweigh the pan on the heat mat with the scales zeroed.
5) To weigh your portion, place your plate on the scales and zero.
6) Add your serving and note the weight.
In this example, my serving size is 179g (I round this up to 180g).
7) When you want to calculate your meal’s nutritional information, use the spreadsheet to calculate the cooked weight.
In this example, 977g – 591g = 386g
8) Create rows for each food item in your cooked meal, entering the quantities you noted earlier. The green cells are calculated, based on published nutritional information and eaten quantities.
This gives the nutritional information for the total cooked weight:
9) Copy the table to make a new block.
10) Replace the cooked weight in the second block with your serving’s weight (as a reminder).
11) In the first cell of eaten quantities, create a formula which refers to the corresponding food row on the previous table: [cell]/pan_weight*serving_weight
In this example, I’m dividing the cell which contains 158 with the total weight 386 to get the info per gram, and multiplying by my serving weight 180 to get the info for my serving.
12) Copy the cell with this new formula and paste it to the other eaten quantity cells in the row.
The resulting table represents the nutritional information for your serving:
13) You can then add additional rows for extras you added for your meal. In this example, I added yoghurt, bread and fruit.
Any questions? No? Good. You may begin.
The Food Confessional 