ReciPal makes it easy for anyone to produce a nutrition label on their own. We always figured food businesses would be the vast majority of our users (and that’s been the case). However, a large number of people have signed up just because they’re interested in nutrition. We all know the nutrition market is a crowded space with lots of tools and trackers competing for attention. So this got us curious. Why are people turning to ReciPal to track macros or deep dive into vitamin deficiencies? And what else might these users need to make it an even better experience?

If you’re one of the many users that told us you’re just interested in nutrition, please fill out this short survey so that we can learn more about how you use the system and how we can help make it even better for you. In effort to explore this use case first hand, I spent a day tracking everything I ate on ReciPal and testing the ways the platform could be used as a daily nutrition calculator. Here’s how it went:

Breakfast

I started off my day with a yogurt parfait. This meal consisted of greek yogurt, a store bought granola mix, some strawberries, a drizzle of honey, and a dash of cinnamon. All of these ingredients could be found within ReciPal’s extensive ingredient database. While I could have opted for a generic granola entry, I decided to add a custom ingredient for the Bear Naked Cacao & Cashew Butter Crunch I was using. This process took about a minute and consisted of me copying the nutrition facts from the back of the bag into ReciPal’s form. In an effort to be ultra accurate I also weighed all the ingredients. The result was a pretty healthy start to my day coming in at 270 calories and already exceeding the recommended amount of Vitamin D (I also added the nutrition facts for my daily vitamin).

💪Pro Tip - One of the features that makes ReciPal helpful for nutrition tracking is the fact that any recipe can easily be turned into a subrecipe. From there, you can use it like any other ingredient in the database. So while I had to add the five ingredients and set the amounts of my yogurt parfait, in the future I can just add my yogurt parfait as a whole. This capability can be especially useful if you have bases or side dishes that you customize or mix and match to create full meals.

Lunch

For lunch, I was in a rush and kept it simple with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on whole wheat bread and a glass of milk. It was very easy to add the three ingredients and with one click I turned this sandwich into a subrecipe that I can use in the future.

💪Pro Tip - Rather than simply tracking my nutrition, ReciPal is a great tool for nutrition research and development. You can easily copy a recipe, adjust amounts, and swap ingredients to find balanced meals that meet your fitness goals. So if you’re trying to stay under a certain amount of carbohydrates or consume a certain amount of protein, you can experiment with different combinations that help me meet your goals, while still creating satisfying meals. For the PB&J, I had two choices of bread in my house but Dave’s Killer Bread cut out half the carbohydrates. I went with the healthier choice!

Dinner

Dinner was courtesy of Trader Joe’s. I cooked up some of their Masala veggie burgers with a side of their spicy Mexican style cauliflower rice. I created custom ingredients for each of these items. Since I often use a variety of their frozen selections, having these in the system lets me easily mix and match the many combinations of their products.

💪Pro Tip - I highly recommend weighing out an actual serving size to see the visual representation. It’s also important to keep in mind that a serving size isn’t a health-based suggestion, but rather a reference of the typical amount someone consumes in a sitting.

Tracking by Meal

Another hack I discovered was creating a recipe for each meal (ie breakfast, lunch, dinner) and adding all the components. From there, I took all the meals and put those into one recipe to see my daily nutrition. This setup lets me see the nutrient contributions by meal and for the day as a whole, while still being able to see how each ingredient contributes to my overall nutrition. While it’s kind of a work around to set it up in this fashion, I could easily see it becoming a simple feature for nutrition tracing.

Of course there was some snacking that went on throughout the day (I created a separate category for this too). I had a cheese stick, some cashews, a bag of popcorn, and a piece of chocolate. Normally, I would aimlessly munch on these snacks, but, as we know, observation changes the observed. So this data probably represents less junk than I would have on a normal day. Again, I used my scale to figure out how much I was actually consuming which was somewhat eye opening.

💪Pro Tip - The nutrition breakdown page within ReciPal does a great job of highlighting how each ingredient/meal contributes to your overall nutrient and vitamin levels. At the end of the day my snacking accounted for 624 calories. What’s interesting here is that while the snacks only made up 13% of the weight of my daily intake, they accounted for 38% of my daily calories.

The Full-Day Results

Without much effort I was able to track everything I ate in the day. It came out to a total of 1700 calories. Looking at the nutrition label for my day created a clear illustration of my macros and the my % daily values.

The Verdict

Despite not being designed specifically for tracking daily nutrition, ReciPal has a number of features that let you take control and get granular. One thing I think is really helpful is the ability to add tags on all of the recipes. When you’re putting together meals this lets you easily search for the factors you're after (low carb, high protein, vegetarian, etc.). If you’re just counting calories, there’s probably a simpler solution out there. And if you’re looking for something very tailored to a specific use case, you can likely find that too. However, if you want to go beyond the basics with lots of flexibility, accuracy, and attention to detail, ReciPal can be a great tool to explore nutrition. We’d love to hear from you how we can make it even better!