Has anyone else found that many of the recipes in the BSD book (not the cookbook – not got that yet) are totally inaccurate in terms of calorie count? It’s happened a few times where I’ve put the exact ingredients into MyFitnessPal trying to ensure they are validated ingredients or scanning the barcode and got to a totally different calorie number to the book. One example just today was for the Beetroot Falafel…. without the yoghurt and rocket…. it came to 90 cals more than stated in the book! I find this worrying as it makes it harder to plan. Anyone else had this experience?

This came up on another thread. I am not familiar with MFP. I use Fat Secret to log my consumption. I am not following the recipes (I don’t have easy access to shops, making it a bit difficult, plus some ingredients are simply not available where I live).

On Fat Secret, they give lots of different options for the same food item, as purchased from different supermarkets. Sometimes, the figures are very different. I was shocked to see that 100 g of smoked salmon from one place is well over a hundred calories more than the same weight from a different supermarket. It may be that MFP uses the top range figures rather than an average or the bottom figures.

On the thread I post to (of people who started around 29 August), there are people not bothering to count carbs or calories but sticking religiously to the recipes. 54andfatnomore was only following the recipes and lost spectacular amounts of weight in the first few weeks (he hasn’t posted this last week or possibly two), far, far more than me. So the only thing I can say is that the recipes do work for weight loss.

I’ve only followed the recipes in the book for the last two weeks (my first two) and have lost nearly 8lbs (with only about 23 to lose) so it’s worked for me. As long as it works I’m going to continue doing it that way

Don’t know about the recipes in the book … but just now i’ve been trying to work out and write out on index cards for foods i want to regularly eat on this plan.
It is extremely difficult to get sources to agree … and sometimes to get a count on the exact item … and then it varies with brand names. I’m going to use the counts on packaging … in Canada calories, carbs, sodium, fats, etc. is on packaging.

I’m writing down some “ballpark” numbers …. and aiming for a ballpark of 800 calories and 50 carbs. I’m going to review the results weekly … and if i’m loosing weight and/or measurements i’m not going to worry much.

I don’t know about other countries … but in Canada … i saw a tv program a while back where cheese/dairy products were legally allowed to be 25 percent off on things like fat content.
This was a while back …. but does the government check for exact compliance on every thing? Doubt it.

The recipes in the book are often inaccurate. They can’t be accurate when they use handsfuls, or one [beet, chicken breast, red pepper, etc.], becase things like that are not all the same size – so the calorie amounts will be different if you use a large one v. a small one.

As for MFP – the data is entered by members, and not checked. You have to verify the calorie/carb/etc. values if you want to make sure you are counting accuragely.

As for the counts on packaging – make sure you’re checking the weight. The stated weight of the package is often lower than the actual weight – so if you divy up portions based on how many the package says it will make you are often undercounting the calories you actually consume..

Hi Snoop
I prefer FatSecret to MFP (hate the name though!) and switched after using MFP for about 10-12 weeks – they do do pretty much the same thing though. I don’t follow the recipes either, just make my own up and aim for low carb; I can’t bear to plan out what I will be eating a week in advance, let alone follow a plan that someone else has put together – plus if you’re mainly cooking for one, you usually end up with several portions of something, whether you’ve cooked it or just purchased a packet of something.

Personally, I much prefer that ads are practically non-existent on FS, and most importantly that they have a UK site.
This means you don’t get tons of entries where the only measure available is a cup – probably OK if you’re based in the US and are used to that, but it always seems horribly imprecise to me. I understand that US nutrition states the Carbs including grams of fibre, whereas UK is the net figure – quite important if you’re carb counting.
On entering foods to the database, there are sense checks that I didn’t notice on MFP – eg you can’t enter foods without a carb value, even if that means typing zero, and the grams of sugar cannot exceed grams of carb. There’s also a delay from entering stuff and it being available on the shared database; presumably some further checking in the background that adds to the accuracy. I’ve certainly found a lot fewer duff entries on FS compared to MFP.