Matching Ingredients to MyNetDiary Foods

Matching recipe ingredients to MyNetDiary foods is the most crucial step in the recipe import process.

MyNetDiary is using a sophisticated set of rules to find the closest matches of each of the recipe ingredients to MyNetDiary foods. This matching is done to calculate the full nutrition of the recipe. The foods matched in MyNetDiary's database may be not exact foods as listed in recipe ingredients, they may be prepared in a slightly different way, but they should have similar nutrition information.

In your actual recipe, some ingredients may have additional comments and instructions, e.g., about slicing or otherwise preparing the ingredient. MyNetDiary will save and display the original ingredient text, and it will be displayed while viewing the recipe in MyNetDiary. At the same time, MyNetDiary will save matched MyNetDiary food and amount, calculating full recipe nutrition facts.

On the Ingredients Matching screen, you will see a row for each ingredient, with the original text in italic, and matching MyNetDiary food and amount below it.

In some cases, MyNetDiary cannot match the amount of the ingredient. In the screenshot above, "small jalapeno chile" cannot be matched to available servings of chili peppers in MyNetDiary. These ingredients will be indicated with the red "i" marker. You'll have to tap the ingredient and then tap Change Amount in the popup menu, then enter its amount manually using serving available for this food.

In some cases, MyNetDiary may match to a wrong food. If you see that the MyNetDiary food matched is not right, then tap the ingredient and tap Change Food in the popup menu, then search and select another food.

In some cases, MyNetDiary may not find a matching food at all. Such foods will be displayed at the top, in section Not Matched Ingredients. In the screenshot above, food "Exotic rare beef" is not matched in MyNetDiary's database. Tap each of the ingredients that are not matched and use food search to find the right food.

Complex Recipes

Sometimes, a full recipe may consist of several mini-recipes, such as the main dish recipe and a sauce recipe. While you can import everything as a single recipe, in most cases, it makes sense to create separate recipes for each of the "mini-recipes." This way, you would have more flexibility in varying and combining different amounts from different mini-recipes. In our example - using different amounts of sauce for the same amount of the main dish.

In this case, you can run recipe import twice (or more - if it consists of multiple mini-recipes.) First time, import only ingredients of the first mini-recipe, while deleting ingredients belonging to the second mini-recipe (sauce in our example). After completely matching and saving the new main dish recipe, then run recipe import for this recipe web page the second time. Now, remove ingredients of the first mini-recipe leaving only ingredients of the second mini-recipe, then save the second recipe.

When logging the food eaten, you will be logging separately the amount eaten of the first mini-recipe and the second mini-recipe, providing you with greater flexibility.