Catherine Conner I believe they said elsewhere that it’s something they’re either considering or working on. For right now, what I normally do is either just include the individual ingredients, if it’s only a few, or I build the recipes somewhere else, like in cronometer (which I’ve taken to using in place of spark), and then manually enter it as a custom food item.

In this case, I was just kind of frustrated that they are suggesting recipes without giving any actual nutrition information, so I basically would need to go and do the calculations to decide if it’s even worth making and manually enter it/build it in order to log it. I feel like, if it’s a recipe they’re suggesting, enough people will be using it that they can afford the time that it would take to put the nutrition information in for us. We still have the ability to modify, but having that there would be really helpful. At a minimum including it on the page about the recipe would be good, but having it in the food database would be great too. We of course could still do our own calculation, if we don’t trust the one that’s provided, and often when I use a recipe online, I will ultimately calculate manually because I end up using a different serving size, but it would be nice to have information available.

Rebecca Schulman. Thank you for the suggestion about Cronometer! That has a lot of things I wish were here also, but I will definitely start using it to get more accurate measurements and nutrition info when AI hasn't. When you create a recipe or meal on Levels (at least on Beta) I don't see how you can add different measurements (oz, T) for instance. What is the "food database" you refer to? The one that is built in to Levels? I'm new to this and am beta testing. Thanks. Janelle

Barrington Puppy yep, when I said database, I meant the dataset(s) levels is pulling from when you enter an item/search. Since I was specifically talking about the recipes they offer/suggest, it’s kind of a special situation. I’m pretty leery of using anything from the searched database without cross checking it because I’ve found a lot of inaccurate info, so most of the entries I use are custom for prepared/packaged goods or cross referenced with things like the usda database.

There are some where I know it’s not perfect, but probably close enough or I know there’s no way I’m going to get it exact, and I’ll just go with what’s in the system; some examples are cooked zucchini… choices are boiled, grilled, or raw. I have no idea why, but that’s it. I usually broil or bake it. Other veggies the choice is often cooked with or without oil, which doesn’t really account for how much oil, but unless I’ve actually measured it and am sure it all makes it onto the plate, I just use what’s there and figure it’s close enough. Chances are I’m using less oil than the data accounts for anyway and I’d rather overestimate rather than underestimate calories and macros (aside from protein).

The units of measure thing is an issue and I’m still waiting to see it addressed. You can make the units you enter ultimately be almost anything, but the base is always grams, which doesn’t work well for a lot of liquids and there have been many requests to have them at least modify it to allow selection of a weight or volume measure, because sometimes you just don’t have the weight equivalent for something that is only given in fluid volume on the label. They were supposedly working on that for a while, but it was marked as closed and I don’t think I saw any response when I asked what was up.

As to the AI stuff, I’ve tried it a time or two and it just doesn’t work well for the way I eat, so it’s not a feature I’m likely to use, though the way it tries to name meals is kind of hilarious.

Rebecca Schulman Thanks for the reply!