Recipe Talk

Hello all,

I am new to the forum. I found it googling "Request a recipe"; so I'm sorry to put in a request before I have anything to offer, but that is why I'm here. :)

I am looking for dishes that contain 100%, or danged close to it, of the US RDA of the essential vitamins and minerals.

I get most nutrition from vegies, fruits, nuts and berries.
I do eat meat.
I do cook food (not a raw food only person)
I am not trying to lose weight or fight any current disease, so just about anything is OK.

I do not eat organs.

I have looked on mainly one other website that shows a lot of this type of information, but I'm still having trouble meeting that 100% mark.

If anyone can help, I would really appreciate it.

Tace

Hi Tace,

It just happens that we made some far reaching visible updates to the site related to integrating recipes, ingredients combined with nutrition data over the last couple of days.

see http://recipeland.com/nutrition for a taste - all the foods (per USDA) along with detailed nutrition analysis including RDA

Each ingredient in each recipe is now linked to this data (actually has been for some time it's just now been made more visible). Click on an ingredient link when viewing a recipe.

This is actually the result of years of work to achieve more or less what you're looking for.

As we continue to develop the integration of nutrition data my aim is to allow searching and sorting of recipes based on nutritional requirements. % of RDA sounds like a good starting point.

Another feature that will be forthcoming is the ability to customize a recipe and as you change or modify ingredients the nutritional data will be dynamically updated so that you can tweak a recipe to your nutritional needs and see the the nutritional impact of the alterations in real-time.

I'm curious which other site have you been using for research?

Sean

Hi Sean,

I checked out the link you gave me. It has a nice layout. I guess I like different things about all the sites I've looked into.

The link you gave me seems to show only some information on calories, carbs, fiber--almost like a nutrition label. It's good information to be sure, but I eat well, and I'm not worried about calories or carbs.

To satisfy your curiosity, I use, likely predictably, http://nutritiondata.self.com

It offers a pie chart that shows how much of essential vitamins and minerals you are getting...as well as other tools that I don't worry about so much.

The problem is, when I know I am short on, say, Niacin, or copper, it is a pains-taking process looking up foods that are high in that nutrient, then editing the recipe to add the food. I have spent hours working on a recipe and can't seem to get it right. That is to say, I'm not just being lazy. I am at my wits end.

To give an example, I pulled up the chart on broccoli, raw--it has a great looking chart. I added a couple other items to that recipe and looked at the chart. I compared both charts and the one for broccoli alone looked more full than the one with other healthful foods in the recipe. That doesn't even make sense. Oh, and yes, I made sure the quantities of my broccoli were equal on each recipe, so the chart actually looked wrong.

Anyway, I appreciate your response. If you figure out any recipes that address all the vitamins and minerals, and over a days worth of meals equal 100% of the US RDA, let me know.

Thanks,

Tace

Hmm, the nutrition pages off http://recipeland.com/nutrition have two tables detailing listings of all of the RDA vitamins and minerals respectively, located immediately under the Nutrition Facts, calorie and carbs breakdown that you mention. It was not my intention to imply that you're interested in calories, carbs and the like. It's clear to me you are looking for the vitamins and minerals RDA #'s specifically.

In the next week or so hope to have time to add more of the nitty gritty, eg. fatty acids, etc. all from the same USDA info, it's all there in the back-end I just haven't had time to layout the info yet. Pie charts and such will follow later.

I hear ya on how painful it is to try to look up food in the USDA's listing (either on nutritiondata or our site), we're working to make this easier here by linking our existing recipe ingredients to the USDA's version which we will then be able to process into something more user friendly I hope.

The discrepancies in your example over on ND sound like their calculations are out of whack. Accurate on individual foods as they just have to look them up in the USDA data but when combining them sounds as if something's not right and the charts are likely just inaccurate "editorial opinion".

Hopefully as we progress on the nutrition integration here it will become easier to locate foods that are rich in what the visitor is looking for.

Sorting on specific vitamins and minerals shouldn't be too difficult, for us it's more of a challenge figuring out how make the user interface easy to use while offering the detail for those who wish for it.

On the development plate here is:

-sorting the foods by vitamin or mineral to more easily find foods rich in specific nutrients

-searching and sorting the 53k recipes we have to locate those rich in specific nutrients

-displaying nutrition information dynamically so that when creating or adding a recipe the impact of each ingredient is clearly visible (and ensuring that the resulting chart is accurate and makes sense!)

Will post here once the functionality is up and running. I think once we get this working it will become a lot easier to create "the perfect recipe". :)

You're looking to equal 100% of RDA? I assume it would be ok to exceed 100% on some nutrients and that your goal is to meet or exceed 100% on all of the RDA guidelines as far as vitamins and minerals are concerned.