Cooking Done Light

I have received quite a few emails from people asking how I obtain the nutrition information for my recipes. There really is no secret formula for figuring out how many calories are in a meal – it’s just some simple (yet time consuming) math.

Let’s say that for lunch today, I decided to have a simple salad made up of 1 1/2 cups baby spinach, 1 cup of cherry tomatoes, a grilled chicken breasts and a little olive and vinegar for the dressing.

Well 1 1/2 cups of baby spinach has 40 calories , 1 cup of cherry tomatoes has 27 calories, the chicken breast (only a little guy – 3 oz) has 110 calories, 1/2 tablespoon of olive oil has 60 calories, and 2 teaspoon of balsamic vinegar has 20 calories.

So…

40+27+110+60+20 = 257 calories total in my salad. Now if I decide to share my meal with another person, then I would need to divide my serving by 2, which would leave each person with a 128 1/2 calorie salad.

So when you see the nutrition information at the end of each recipe, I have added together all of the ingredients that I will be using, and divided it by the number of servings that each meal makes. Like I said, simple but very time consuming.

Most prepackaged, canned, and bagged foods have the nutrition information right on them (I can’t tell you how much easier that makes my life!). But for things like veggies, fruits, nuts, and some other “oddball” ingredients, I use a great site called nutritiondata.com. You should check it out, they have pretty much any food (even restaurant and brand name items) indexed on their site. I have found it to be a great resource for anyone who is health conscious, has special dietary needs/restrictions, or is watching their caloric intake.

Thank you all for your emails and comments! I hope that this answers some of your questions. If there is anything that you are interested to find out about the site, a recipe, or one of your favorite meals – please do not hesitate to contact me!!