In order to calculate the nutrient composition of a recipe, you need to have the following information, otherwise your calculation will be incorrect:

• Detail about every ingredient used in the recipe
  For example, the fat content of pork varies from about 4g to 24g per 100g. You therefore need to know what cut of the particular meat is used and whether lean only or lean+fat is used. Even for minor ingredients such as colours or flavourings, you need to know whether they contain a carrier such as oil, starch, flour or salt which will affect the nutrient composition of the recipe.
• Amount of each item used in the recipe
• Cooked dish: weight loss on cooking
  When foods are cooked, weight is lost and the nutrient density increases. If you do not take weight loss on cooking into account, nutrient contents will be underestimated. For example, you may think a recipe is low in fat when it is not. The dish should therefore be weighed after cooking so that weight loss can be calculated.
  If this is not possible, click here for help in deciding what value would be approprate.
• Nutrient composition of every ingredient in the recipe
  Nutrient composition data can either be obtained from food composition tables or from ingredient suppliers. Make sure the data you are using is for recent analyses of the ingredients.
• Vitamins: likely loss on cooking
  Some vitamins, e.g. vitamin C, thiamin, etc, are lost on cooking. These losses should therefore be taken into account in your calculations. Typical vitamin losses for particular types of foods and various cooking methods can be found in McCance and Widdowson's Food Composition Tables (HMSO, 2002).
  If you are intending to include water-soluble vitamins on a product label, it is best to report analysed values rather than calculated values. This is because losses on processing will be variable. In addition, further losses will occur over the shelf-life of the product.

If you wish to calculate the nutrient composition of recipes to help in the analysis of food intake records or menu planning, you should use WISP. Click here to find out more.

If you wish to calculate the nutrient composition of recipes for product labelling, you should use CARAT. Click here to find out more.