These days most pre-packaged foods come with nutritional information printed on the packaging for your convenience – even if sometimes it can be a bit difficult to understand and lead to fasters making the mistake of miscounting their calories!
But what can you do if you’re using fresh ingredients to cook from scratch? How can you easily work out how many calories are in your fasting meal? Here are our top tips on how to count the calories in your meals. The only thing you need is a good set of kitchen scales and one of the following…
#1 Google Nutrition Information
Is there nothing Google can’t do?! Many of use Google to look up all sorts of information, from product prices to shop opening times and travel directions, but did you know that Google can also give you nutritional data for just about any ingredient you can imagine? Just type something like “calories in mushrooms” and Google will present you not only with a quick way of checking the calories for different quantities of different kinds of mushrooms, but also full nutritional information on the right hand side of the page. Brilliant!
#2 The Calorie Count Recipe Analysis Tool
It always surprises me that more people don’t know about this tool – it’s so handy and best of all, it’s free! Simply enter the recipe ingredients into the box on the recipe analysis page, something like this:
50g mushrooms
50g tomatoes
10g cheddar cheese
50ml semi skimmed milk
2 large eggs
1tsp oil
Don’t forget to enter the number of servings made from the recipe into the box at the top, if it’s more than one serving. Now click the Analyze Recipe button and voila! an instant calorie calculation for your recipe, including a full nutritional breakdown and a list of the good and bad points about the recipe, nutritionally speaking. The above simple omelette contains 268 calories according to the tool, why not try it for yourself?
#3 Calorie Counting Apps
Need to count calories on the go? Try a calorie counting app! There are lots of good calorie counting apps available for free on both Android and iOS platforms.
#4 Smart Kitchen Scales
Here’s one for the gadget lovers out there! Relatively new to the market, smart kitchen scales connect wirelessly to an app on your mobile device, allowing you to check the nutritional information of ingredients and foods as you weigh them. I haven’t yet found any that are readily available in the UK (although a company named SITU is apparently working on some smart kitchen scales for the UK & European market), but if you’re based in the USA, check these Escali SmartConnect Kitchen Scales out – not only do they give you the nutritional info but they’ll also allow you to keep a food diary through the associated app.
…but that’s not all! Here’s a bonus method, waiting for the technology to be ready at some point in the (hopefully near) future.
BONUS #5! Microwave Calorie Counting Device
I’m sure I’m not the only one who can’t wait for this to be available! No doubt one day down the line our cookers and microwave ovens will have this feature built in, but the prototype shown on this article from The Telegraph does look really quite cool!
Do you know of any other quick & easy ways to tot up the calories in your fast day meals? Let us know in the comments!