For every food, I eat, I always like to know the nutritional information it contains. (except for the cake, in which I tend to prefer to live it in blissful ignorance!). This helps me to make good healthy food choices to ensure that my recipes aren’t too high in calories, sugar, fat, and salt.
For all of the recipes on this Thirsty Kitchens, I try to include the estimated nutritional information. It’s essential to note that whilst every effort made to ensure this is as accurate as possible, the nutritional information may vary in the meal or dish that you cook at home due to variations in the exact quantities or ingredients used for preparing your meal.
What Information Is Included
The information provided for every recipe can be broken down into three parts
- Percentage of the daily reference value
- Nutritional information
- Contribution towards your five-a-day fruit and vegetables
Nutritional Information
Each recipe includes the following information
- Calories (kcal)
- Fibre (g)
- Protein (g)
- Salt (g)
- Fat (g)
- Saturated Fat (g)
- Carbohydrates (g)
- Sugar (g)
Percentage Of Daily Reference Value
The daily reference values (DRVs )are often used by food manufacturers so they can simply display how the nutritional information for the food they sell contributes to the amount an average person should consume in a day. In reality, the amount that should be consumed each day varies by gender and age, as well as other factors such as weight, so these should only be used as a rough guide.
The daily reference values for an average adult are
- Calories – 2000 kcal
- Fat – 70g
- Saturated Fat – 20g
- Carbohydrates – 260g
- Sugar – 90g
- Fibre – 24g
- Protein – 50g
- Salt – 6g
Source – The Food and Drink Federation
How The Thirsty Kitchens Nutritional Information Is Calculated
For the thirsty kitchens nutritional information, I calculated the nutrition per serving by just adding the nutritional information for each ingredient included in the recipe and dividing by the number of servings.
Similarly, for the five-a-day fruit and vegetables, I add the number of portions in each ingredient and divide by the number of servings. In order to ensure that the fruit and veg content is not overstated I always round down which means that in many cases you’ll be getting even more fruit and vegetables than expected.
Where Does The Nutritional Information For Each Ingredient Come From?
At any time possible, I use the actual nutritional information supplied on the packet for the ingredients I use. But, this isn’t always that possible (for example, fresh fruit and vegetables, alcohol, and herbs and spices). Where the information I need isn’t available on the packaging, I use one of two data sources.
- Wikipedia
- Tesco groceries – Nutritional information is usually listed for each item on sale
If for any reason I couldn’t find the data available in one of these two sources I will use an alternative source (I try and check it against more the one source if possible).
The source of this fruit and vegetable to your five-a-day is from the NHS.
Leave a Reply