Managing Ingredients
plan:one is a powerful program and it contains comprehensive nutritional analyses of thousands of ingredients from the major world standard food databases. You have access to two of these major databases: FSA which is the official UK database and USDA which is the official US database.
Searching for ingredients
To search for an ingredient, click “Manage Ingredients” on the navigation bar.
At the top of the left hand screen you will see buttons for “My Ingredients” and “FSA” or “USDA” depending on your profile setup. Select which database you wish to search. Type the name of the ingredient into the search box and click the green arrow to the right of the search box. For example if you wish to search the USDA database for cheddar cheese, when you click the green arrow, seven results will appear in the left hand screen.
When you select the first result, the screen to the right will display the details and nutritional information of the item under the headings General Properties, Measures and Nutritional Information per 100g (%).
Search tips:
Avoid plurals – e.g. type green onion not green onions. Be as precise as possible e.g. cheddar cheese not cheese.
Ingredient Properties
General Properties
Under the heading General Properties you are shown the following fields:
Name - this is the name of the ingredient as it appears in the official database.
Display Name – this may include the same information as the “Name” field or in the case of frequently used ingredients, it will provide a more user friendly name. It is this name that will appear in the recipes containing this ingredient.
Supplier - this field is blank to allow you to specify your choice of supplier, if you copy this ingredient to “My Ingredients”.
Brand - this field is blank to allow you to specify your preferred brand, if you copy this ingredient to “My Ingredients”.
Category - ingredients have been grouped into 24 categories to assist in the recipe building process.
Price - this field is blank to allow you to specify the current price of the ingredient, if you copy this ingredient to “My Ingredients”.
Packet Size – this field is blank to allow you to specify the packet size, if you copy this ingredient to “My Ingredients”.
Measures
Some ingredients tend to be expressed within recipes not by weight but by a measure such as teaspoon, tablespoon, slice, small, medium, large or unit. The measures used for each ingredient are indicated here together with the actual weight of the measure shown in brackets. If you copy an ingredient to “My Ingredients” you can add your own measures.
Nutritional Information per 100g (%)
The nutritional information within plan:one is drawn from the FSA and USDA databases. At a glance you can see the precise composition of any ingredient in terms of calories and all of the main macronutrients (carbohydrates, protein, fats etc.)
Using Ingredients
If you wish to use or make alterations to an ingredient, such as inserting brand and pricing information or adding a measure, you must copy the ingredient from the main database into your personal “My Ingredients” database. To do this, select an ingredient from either the FSA or USDA database and click “Copy to My Ingredients” at the bottom of the left hand screen.
A dialog box will appear asking you to confirm that you would like to copy the ingredient. Click “Copy” to proceed. The ingredient which you have copied will now open up in the right hand screen as an editable screen.
Add New Ingredients
plan:one is a powerful program and it contains comprehensive nutritional analyses of thousands of ingredients from the major world standard food databases. However, if an ingredient which you wish to use is not in the database, you can easily add it in.
Click “Manage Ingredients” on the navigation bar to go to the Ingredients section. At the bottom of the left hand screen click “Add”. A dialog box will open to allow you to type the name of your new ingredient. Click “Add” to continue. In the right hand screen, the ingredient details form will be displayed to allow you to add your information.
Editing Ingredients
Add General Properties
The name you have selected for your ingredient will appear in both the “Name” and “Display Name” fields. Now add details of your Supplier, Brand, Category (select from dropdown list), Price and Packet Size. Click “Save” before continuing.
To add further details, click “Edit” at bottom right of the screen.
Add Measures
To add a measure, click “Add Measure”. A dialog box will open to allow you to enter the name of your measure (e.g. piece, cup, single, small, medium, large). Then enter the weight of the measure by typing in the figure and selecting the unit of measurement from the dropdown menu. Measure Rounding Preferences can be added to your measure. This means that when you use the measure within a recipe, if the ingredient is scaled up or down (to meet your personal requirements), the amount will always be rounded up or down to conform to your settings.
For example, you could add a “tablespoon” as a unit of measure for the ingredient “pine nuts”. It is advisable to set it to “Round to the nearest half”. This means that when the recipe is adjusted to suit your exact requirements, instead of the amount of pine nuts being expressed as say 3.62 tablespoons, it will be expressed as 3.50 tablespoons.
Measures can be removed or edited using the buttons to the right of each measure.
- Edit Measure – click this to go to the Measure Properties.
- Delete Item – click this to delete the measure permanently from the ingredient.
Add Nutritional Information per 100g (%)
To add the Nutritional Information for your ingredient, click “Edit” at bottom right of the screen. All of the relevant information is likely to be indicated on the package and it is essential that you enter it into the system. Enter the relevant information in each field using the percentage figures or those shown for 100 grams of product. If your new ingredient is liquid, you should record the amount of the liquid (in ml or fluid oz) that equates to 100g. If you do not know the precise weight, this will be automatically set at the default value.
When you have completed this section click “Save” and then click “Finished Editing”. The ingredient has now been added to “My Ingredients” and will be available for you to use to build recipes and plans.