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Nutrition Crash Course

FREE TOOL: Calories and nutrients per serving, using USDA FoodData Central. No sign-up needed.

Recipe Calorie & Nutrition Calculator

Paste your ingredients, check each USDA match, and get calories and nutrients for the whole recipe and per serving.

Enter Your Recipe

Use grams for the best accuracy: 200 g chicken breast, raw. Also accepted: kg, oz, lb, ml, cups, tbsp, tsp, counts and fractions like 1 1/2 or ½.

How to use it

  1. List ingredients one per line, with an amount. Weights in grams give the most reliable result.
  2. Check each USDA match. Pick a better entry from the list or search again if the food or preparation is wrong.
  3. Confirm amounts. For cups, spoons or “2 eggs”, choose a USDA serving size or type the grams yourself.
  4. Calculate to see the whole recipe and one serving.

Common issues

Raw vs cooked. Match the USDA entry to how you weighed the food. Dry pasta, rice and lentils weigh far less than cooked, so a cooked entry with a raw weight would be very wrong. Why cooking changes weight.

Cooking oil. Include oil and butter as ingredients; they are often the biggest calorie source.

Vague quantities. “A pinch”, “a clove” or “a can” have no fixed weight. Enter grams from the pack or a kitchen scale.

Brands. USDA entries are general foods. Your product's label may differ, especially for sauces, breads and cereals. How to read nutrition labels.

Next step

See how protein per serving relates to UK and EU adult reference amounts.

Compare with your protein range

Common questions

How does the calculator work out calories per serving?

Each ingredient's USDA value per 100 g is multiplied by the grams you confirmed and divided by 100. The ingredients are added together for the whole recipe, then divided by your number of servings.

Should I weigh ingredients raw or cooked?

Either works, as long as the USDA match describes the same state. 100 g of raw rice and 100 g of cooked rice have very different values because cooked rice contains absorbed water. Weighing raw and choosing a raw entry is usually the most consistent.

Why does it ask me to confirm cups, spoons or “2 chicken breasts”?

Sizes vary a lot. The calculator only converts these using a serving weight listed in the selected USDA entry, and you choose which one. If none fits, enter the weight in grams yourself.

What does N/A mean?

The USDA entry does not report that nutrient. It is not zero. Totals that leave out an ingredient are labelled as partial.

Does cooking change the calories in my recipe?

Cooking mostly changes water weight, so the recipe total stays similar while calories per 100 g of the finished dish change. Fat added for frying, or fat that drains away, does change the total. Add oil you cook with as its own ingredient. See cooked vs raw food.

Is this a nutrition label for selling food?

No. It is an educational estimate from a US database. Food sold to the public has its own legal labelling rules in each country.

Data source