Whether this is your first time here, or you've clicked the help button, we'd like to say hello!
When cooking food from scratch or modifying recipes, it can be difficult to keep track of the
nutritional value of each ingredient used. We believe that being informed about the foods we are eating
is a key component to taking care of our health and the health of our families. That's why we've
released this calculator! You can input your daily recipes (or ones you're curious about trying out!)
and get an exact breakdown of the nutritional content, ingredient by ingredient.
How It Works:
Our Community Nutritional Calculator is quite unique: the calculator actually learns alongside us as we
input new ingredients and recipes! The first time an ingredient is entered, the calculator accesses
USDA's food database and adds the nutritional information to its collection, then provides the
information to you. When adding to the collection, a pop-up will be displayed on your screen with a
prompt asking if you want to "Load New Ingredient" and once you accept, that ingredient will be
memorized by the calculator for future use. For example, the first time someone tries to add a "tomato"
to their recipe, they will have to click "Load New Ingredient" and then, every time someone adds a
tomato to their recipe afterwards, the calculator will remember the information and deliver it
automatically! Building the calculator this way allows us to include our community in the process of
providing nutritional education to residents of Pima County. Thank you in advance for being our partner
in this work!
How To Use:
First, please wait for the application to load. This will look like a red spinner over the center of
the page, and the ingredients input will be grayed out.
Once the spinner has vanished, please proceed!
Next, you will notice the table has three options, 'Ingredient', 'Quantity', and 'Unit.' At first, you
will only be able to input the 'Ingredient'. This is on purpose, so that the calculator can find you the
right units of measurement and nutritional information for that ingredient.
After you have entered the ingredient, hit 'Enter' on your keyboard, or click away from the box. If the
calculator has had this ingredient entered before, it will automatically load it. If it hasn't, the
calculator will have to learn this ingredient, which might result in one of these messages (remember,
you probably entered it correctly, but this is part of the calculator’s learning process):
- Fuzzy Logic Match: If the input wasn't easily recognized, the calculator will try to match it with its language
- Misspelling Match: If the input was misspelled, the calculator will try to match it with its learned ingredients.
- Load New Ingredient: If the input wasn't recognized, the calculator will use its ability to learn and will search for new ingredients to add to our
database!
Once the ingredient is added, you can input the units of measurement (i.e. cup, ounce, etc.) and the quantity.
Add more ingredients with the 'Add Ingredient to Recipe' button in tools, and once you are happy with your recipe, click 'Calculate Recipe.'
Warnings
This calculator comes with a series of warnings if it detects certain things:
Daily Value
If any of the daily values (calories, fat, etc.) are too high per serving, the calculator will warn you, and displays a tip on the side of the nutritional facts to help make the meal healthier.
Ingredients
If an ingredient is found that is exceedingly high in recommended daily
values, or represents a very high amount of those daily values as a percentage, it will be flagged in the ingredients table as well.
Garden Kitchen Recommendations
Additionally, The Garden Kitchen recommends a well-balanced, healthy diet, and if any of Arizona Health Zone's recommendations are exceeded, a pop up will display with which recommendations have been exceeded.
Help
If you need this information to be displayed again, click the 'Show Help' button in the Tools section. Thank you so much for visiting and teaching our calculator!
