fotorieFood calorie calculators work well with an apple or yogurt: you search, read the label, and you’re done. The problem comes with real food, the kind you cook at home: a lentil stew, your mother’s lentils, a stir-fry you made by eye. There’s no label here. We’ll show you the manual method we use in consultation and, at the end, how to skip almost all of it.
The manual method, in four steps
1. Weigh ingredients raw
The golden rule: food composition tables give values per 100 g of raw product. Rice absorbs water and triples its weight when cooked; meat loses water and shrinks. If you weigh cooked and look up the raw value, you’ll be wrong by 30-60%.
So, when cooking, note each ingredient as it comes out of the package or fridge: 250 g of dry lentils, 1 onion (about 150 g), 2 carrots (about 160 g), 30 ml of oil. Oil is the most forgotten and the one that weighs most in the count: one tablespoon is 10 ml and about 90 kcal.
2. Look up each ingredient in a reliable table
Use a serious source: the Spanish Food Composition Database (BEDCA), CESNID tables, or the USDA database if you can’t find something. Package labels are just as valid. Avoid figures from forums or internet recipes: many are poorly copied.
Note calories per 100 g and, if you want to be more precise, protein, carbohydrates, and fats.
3. Sum the total in the pot
Multiply each quantity by its value and sum. That’s the total for the complete recipe, with all the servings it yields.
4. Divide by servings (weighing what’s cooked)
Weigh the finished pot (subtracting the weight of the empty pot) and weigh your serving. Your portion of the total calories is proportional to your portion of the weight. This is the only time cooked weight matters, and it’s only for distribution.
Real example: stewed lentils
Recipe for 4 servings, weighed raw:
| Ingredient | Quantity | kcal per 100 g | total kcal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dry lentils | 300 g | 325 | 975 |
| Onion, carrot, pepper | 350 g | 32 | 112 |
| Potato | 200 g | 77 | 154 |
| Olive oil | 30 ml | 884 | 265 |
Total for the pot: about 1,500 kcal (chorizo or bay leaf would change the count; this is without sausage). If the finished pot weighs 1,800 g and your plate weighs 450 g, you eat a quarter: about 375 kcal, with nearly 20 g of protein.
Compare it to what apps usually give when searching for “stewed lentils”: between 250 and 600 kcal per serving depending on the generic recipe they’ve loaded. Hence the interest in calculating yours once.
Tricks to avoid going crazy
- Calculate the recipe only once and save it. Next time, you just weigh your serving.
- Round. A 10% margin is normal even when weighing everything. There’s no point in noting 373 kcal when the table already has that margin of error.
- Be careful with oil, bread, and sauces. These are the three places where half the calories people don’t count are hidden.
- Dishes from outside. A restaurant won’t tell you how much oil it uses. Estimate by comparison with what you cook and assume it’s usually more.
The fast way: a photo
Everything above works, but it requires a scale, time, and willingness. Most people do it for two weeks and then quit. That’s why in Fotorie the process is different: you take a photo of the dish and the app identifies the foods, estimates the serving of each in grams, and gives you calories, protein, carbohydrates, and fats.
Is it as accurate as weighing? No. It’s an estimate with a margin that is usually between 10 and 20% for normal dishes, and a bit more for very mixed stews or those with a lot of sauce, where the app warns you that confidence is low. To compensate, you can correct the serving if you know the actual weight (for example, if you’ve weighed your 450 g of lentils) and the calculation rescales instantly.
The advantage is not precision, but consistency. An approximate record you make every day is worth much more than an exact one you abandon. You can find details on how it works on the calories by photo page.
When it’s worth weighing
There are situations where a scale is advisable: if you compete in a weight-category sport, if you’re on a very strict deficit under the supervision of a nutritionist, or if you suspect your photo record is systematically underestimating (weigh for a week and compare). For the rest of life, a photo and an occasional correction are enough.
As always with these topics, the figures are indicative. If you have a pathology or a special situation, your diet distribution should be supervised by a professional; the nutritionists at Vitasane are the ones who set the criteria within the app.
