How to Check Recipe Nutritional Values for Free

You might have some dietary restrictions, or perhaps you're just curious about the nutritional value of the recipes you make for your family. Keeping track of calories, calcium, sodium and other ingredients is hard if you don't have the nutritional facts for everything you eat. With the right information and a bit of math, you can create your own nutritional fact sheets for your personal recipes for free.

Things You'll Need

• Pencil
• Paper
• Calculator
• Computer
• Internet connection

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Instructions

• 1

  The easiest way to get free nutritional information for your recipe is to use a recipe web site. On these sites, you enter each ingredient as well as what would be considered a serving size for your recipe, and it will automatically generate a nutritional fact sheet for you. You will likely need to sign up for a free membership on a recipe web site to use this feature. You can find many recipe sites by performing a search online if you don't already use free recipe web sites.

• 2

  If you are unable or unwilling to join a free recipe web site, you can still calculate the nutritional value of your recipe on your own. Write down your list of ingredients and the amounts of each ingredient. Look up the nutritional information for each item on your list. Items that are packaged will have that information on the label, and most nutrition fact labels are broken down per serving. You can use a reference book or go online to look up nutritional information on ingredients that are unlabeled, such as fresh fruits, meats or vegetables. Make a separate column for each nutritional value you want to track, such as calories, fat, sodium or individual vitamins.

• 3

  You will need to calculate the nutritional value of the amounts you use for your recipe. Multiply the amounts of your ingredients by the nutritional values given to come up with your total for each ingredient's column. For example, if you are using an entire box of pasta, multiply the nutritional information per serving for calories by the number of servings in the box. This will give you the total amount of calories for the pasta used in your recipe. Do this for each ingredient in your recipe.

• 4

  Add all of the values in each column to come up with the total for each nutritional value you've selected for your recipe. If you want to break it down per serving, divide the totals by the number of servings in your recipe. This will give you the same kind of nutritional facts you see on nutrition fact labels.

• 5

  If you have a spreadsheet program on your computer and you know how to use it, you can make a spreadsheet with the same information listed in steps 2 through 4.