Adding nutrition data

Add calories and other nutrition facts to an ingredient — tap it in the catalog to open the nutrition editor.

Grocery-only items — things with no nutrition, like paper towels — don’t open the editor. Their row points you to Groceries instead, where you manage them from your Groceries list.

Aisle assignment

At the top of the editor, set the aisle for this ingredient. This determines where it appears on the grocery list. See Editing aisles for how aisles work.

Nutrients

Open Edit all nutrients and fill in the values for a given weight of the ingredient. The app tracks calories, fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrates, fiber, sugar, and protein.

Set Per to the weight those values describe — 100 g is the usual basis. Nutrient values need a Per weight — tap Save without one and the editor asks for it.

You don’t need to fill in all fields — partial data is used for whatever nutrients are present.

Volume conversions

If recipes measure this ingredient by volume (cups, tbsp, ml), set a conversion: how much does one unit of volume weigh? For example, “1 cup = 120 g”. This lets the app convert volume quantities to grams for nutrition calculations.

Without a volume conversion, volume-measured quantities can’t be calculated.

Per-item weight

When a recipe gives just a count — “3 eggs,” “1 avocado” — the app needs to know how much one weighs. Under Conversions, enter a single number in grams in the Per-item weight field.

This weight is also the fallback for a size-qualified count like “6 large” or “1 medium.” If you haven’t given that size its own weight (see below), the app falls back to this per-item weight — so once it’s set, a size-qualified count is still weighed rather than skipped.

Named portion weights

When a recipe names the unit — “2 sticks,” “1 slice” — add a named portion. Under Conversions, tap + Add named portion, type the name (stick, slice), and enter how much one weighs in grams.

Size words work the same way. Add a portion named small, medium, large, or extra large to give that size its own weight — a recipe that calls for “6 large” eggs then uses the large weight. Without a portion for that size, the count falls back to the per-item weight above.

Ingredient aliases

If the same ingredient goes by different names in your recipes (e.g., “cilantro” and “coriander”), add the alternate names as aliases. The app will treat them as the same ingredient for grocery and nutrition purposes.

Some built-in ingredients already carry aliases from the catalog. These show under From the built-in catalog and can’t be removed here — they’re managed in the catalog, not per kitchen. Aliases you add sit in their own list, each with a remove button.

Combine two ingredients into one

Sometimes the name you add as an alias already has an entry of its own in your kitchen — with its own aisle, reminder cadence, pantry history, or nutrition. Tap Save and the editor stops to ask before it merges anything:

coriander already has its own kitchen info. Combine it into cilantro? Its saved details move over.

Tap Combine and save to fold that entry into the ingredient you’re editing and save in one go. If the other entry’s nutrition won’t survive the combine, the question says so — “nutrition will come from cilantro.” If the entry is empty, nothing moves over and the question is only asking you to confirm.

What happens:

Aisle, reminder cadence, “omit from grocery list,” pantry history, and store placements move to the surviving ingredient. They fill in blanks only — where both entries have a value, the one you’re editing wins.
Nutrition follows the surviving name. The other entry’s nutrition moves over only if the ingredient you’re editing isn’t a built-in catalog ingredient and has no nutrition of its own. Otherwise it’s dropped.
Your recipes aren’t rewritten. The old name becomes an alias, so recipes that use it still find the right ingredient — and any aliases the old entry carried keep working too.
Combining can’t be undone. Read the question before tapping.

The question comes up whenever the other name is an entry your kitchen owns, even one that holds nothing yet — combining can’t be undone, so the editor asks first either way. A plain built-in catalog ingredient you’ve never edited and never tracked in the pantry is folded in without asking, and the save goes straight through.

If you combined the wrong things

There’s no undo, but you can unpick part of it by hand. Open the surviving ingredient’s nutrition editor, remove the old name from its alias list, and tap Save.

That breaks the link. The old name stops pointing at the survivor, so recipes using it come back as needing a match — unless it’s a built-in catalog name, which resolves to the built-in entry again. Give it an aisle, nutrition, or a pantry action and it becomes its own entry once more.

Two things that won’t sort themselves out:

Aliases the old entry carried were moved onto the survivor, and removing the old name doesn’t send them back. They sit in the survivor’s alias list — remove each one there if you want it gone.
Details that moved over can’t be told apart from details the survivor always had: aisle, reminder cadence, “omit from grocery list,” and pantry history. Nutrition the combine dropped is gone, and so are store placements that clashed with the survivor’s own. Enter those again by hand.

Combining says the two names are the same thing

Only combine names that mean one ingredient — “cilantro” and “coriander,” or “aubergine” and “eggplant.” A substitute is not the same thing: butter and margarine stand in for each other, but they don’t weigh or read the same on a label. Nor is a narrower kind the same as its parent — cherry tomatoes are not tomatoes, and combining them puts one aisle, one nutrition panel, and one pantry entry on both. Keep those separate.

USDA search

The USDA’s FoodData Central nutrition database ships with the app, so the search panel is always there — nothing to configure. Find it at the top of the editor’s Nutrition section, with the ingredient’s name already filled in.

Tap Search. Each result shows the food’s USDA name and a preview of its calories, fat, carbs, and protein. Tap the import button beside a result to fill the editor with that food’s nutrient values, volume conversion, and named portion weights. More results… loads another page of matches.

Importing fills the fields — it doesn’t save them. Review the values, adjust anything that doesn’t match your ingredient, then tap Save.

When the food you imported carries more than one density measurement (different ways to convert volume to weight), Other USDA densities appears under Conversions. Open it and pick the one that fits best.

Omitting an ingredient

The Aisle section has an Omit from grocery list and nutrition data, and treat as always on hand checkbox. Turn it on for staples like “water” or “ice” — they drop off the grocery list, count as on hand in the pantry, and stay out of nutrition totals.

Recipe check

Under the Conversions section of the editor, a Recipe Check list shows every unit your recipes use for this ingredient and whether each one can be converted to grams. This helps you spot gaps — if a recipe calls for “1 bunch” and there’s no conversion for “bunch,” it’ll be flagged here.

Derived conversions

After entering a volume conversion (e.g., 1 cup = 120 g), the editor automatically shows what that works out to for other volume units (tablespoons, teaspoons, etc.). This is a quick way to sanity-check your numbers.

Saving

Tap Save to apply changes. Updated nutrition data takes effect on all recipes that use this ingredient.

Resetting an ingredient

If you’ve customized an ingredient and want to go back to the built-in catalog data, tap Reset to built-in at the bottom of the editor. This removes your custom values and restores the defaults.