Create a food – Overview

This article steps you through creating a custom food to use in your meal plans, food records and recipes. This article is also available as a video tutorial, click to play below. 

Video tutorial 

Sometimes you might need to create a food as a resource when you can't find a specialised food you need in the data sources supplied with Foodworks, or if you have specific nutrient data for a food. 

When you create a food, it appears in the navigation pane along with your other Foodworks resources. You can create a food as a general resource for your workspace or as a client resource. When you make changes to the food, any resource using it is automatically updated.

Create the food

To create a new food for the workspace

1. Open or create a workspace.
2. On the sidebar, click Resources.
3. In the navigation pane, click New and select Food.
4. On the General tab, enter the name for the food.
5. Enter optional information as required. See Fields on the General tab below.
6. On the Nutrients tab, specify the nutrient composition of the food. See Enter the nutrients below.
7. Optional: On the Measures tab, enter measures for this food. If the food is a liquid, also set the volume measures here. See Enter common measures below.
8. Click Save.

When you click Save, the food is listed in the navigation pane.

To create a food for a specific client

To create a new food for a specific client:

1. Open the workspace containing the client.
2. On the sidebar, click Clients.
3. In the navigation pane, select the client.
4. In the navigation pane, click New and select Food.
5. Enter the information as for creating a workspace food, and click Save.

When you click Save, the food is listed on the client's Resources tab.

Enter its nutrients

You supply the food's nutrient composition data either by entering nutrient data from an external source or by basing its analysis on another similar item from the data sources.

You can also use a hybrid of these approaches, basing the analysis on another item and then supplying data for selected nutrients.

To enter nutrient values for a food from an external source

1. Open the food.
2. On the Nutrients tab, in the Value column, enter the values for each nutrient per 100g (or,  optionally, enter another weight in the Value field for Weight (g)). 
3. Optional: Make notes about a nutrient in the Note column.
4. Click Save.

To base the analysis for a food on another item

1. Open the food.
2. On the Nutrients tab, in the Base analysis on dropdown list, select Other item.
   
3. Search for and select a similar food. The values are imported from the selected food and shown in the Result column.
4. Optional: For any nutrient for which you prefer to use data from another source, type the preferred value in the Value column.
5. Optional: Make notes about a nutrient in the Note column.
6. Click Save.

To set the nutrient values to zero or unknown

1. 1. Open the food.
   2. On the Nutrients tab, in the Base analysis on dropdown list, select Set to Zero or Set to Unknown.
      
   3. Optional: For any nutrient for which you prefer to use data from another source, type the preferred value in the Value column.
   4. Optional: Make notes about a nutrient in the Note column.
   5. Click Save.

Optional: Enter common measures

When you create a custom food, by default, its measure is grams.

Optionally, you can add more measures on its Measures tab. Here, you can add common measures (such as slice) or import the measures from another similar item. If this food is a liquid, you can also enable volume measures (such as mL and L).

To add a common measure

1. 1. Open the food.
   2. On the Measures tab, enter the name for the common measure.
   3. Enter the corresponding weight for that measure.
   4. Optional: To make this measure the default, select the Default measure checkbox. 
   5. Optional: Enter a description for the measure.
   6. Optional: Add another measure using these steps.
   7. Click Save.

Now, when you enter this food into a recipe, meal plan or food record, its common measures are listed for you to select from. If you mark a measure as the Default measure it is the first option to select from. 

To import measures from a similar item

1. 1. Open the food.
   2. On the Measures tab, click Copy measures.
   3. Search for and select a similar item.
   4. Click Save.

Now, when you enter this food into a recipe, meal plan or food record, the imported measures are listed for you to select from.

To enable volume measure for liquids

To provide volume measures for a liquid food, such as millilitres and litres, you need to provide specific gravity information (volume conversion factor)—that is, how much does a particular volume of the liquid food weigh?

1. 1. On the Measures tab, in the Volume boxes, enter a number of millilitres (mL) and a corresponding number of grams (g).
   2. Optional: Select the Liquid checkbox (to show the analyses per 100mL in the analysis pane). 
   3. Click Save.

Now, when you enter this food into a recipe, meal plan or food record, the volume measures are listed for you to select from.