Counting Calories with GrubBase Add-Ons
Make calorie counting easier and more accurate
Those who have calorie counted or used a meal planning app are likely very familiar with food “add-ons”, even if they haven’t referred to them as such.
Consider a simple chicken breast, a staple of so many health-conscious eaters. An average boneless, skinless chicken breast contains 326 calories. 78% of those calories come from protein and the remaining 22% come from fat.
However, if you eat the same exact chicken breast, but leave the skin on, those nutrient values change significantly. A boneless, skin-on chicken breast contains 448 calories, an increase of almost 40%. Additionally, the macronutrient composition is quite different, with only 61% of those calories coming from protein and 39% coming from fat.
In this case, the skin of the chicken breast is an example of an “add-on”. In cases of both eating and discarding the skin, it would be equally accurate to say, “I ate a chicken breast.” However, the amount of calories consumed and the macronutrient composition of those calories varies significantly between these two scenarios.
Of course, if you are a calorie counting veteran, you know that chicken breasts vary in size and the chicken breast should be measured for the most accurate assessment of nutrition information.
Easy enough. You break out a scale and find that your particular chicken breast weighs 8 ounces. A typical calorie counting app might tell you that the 8 ounces of chicken breast contains 272 calories. However, your chicken breast is bone-in and skin-on, and you’re not planning on eating either the bone (of course) or the skin — avoiding the latter because you don’t want the extra fat calories.
At best, the app you selected might show you dozens of different “chicken breast” results, one each for all sorts of chicken breast combinations — leaving you to spend precious time sorting through results and trying to find the right combination. At worst, even after spending all that time sifting through the results, you still won’t find the combination you are looking for.
Even more frustrating, in almost all cases, the actual nutrient values you find leave you confused or scrambling to perform SAT-like math calculations when you should be focused on cooking dinner. (If the 8 oz serving reported in the app only includes the edible portion and your measurement includes both skin and bones, which add 20% and 9% to the weight respectively, how many edible ounces do you have?)
At GrubBase, after trying dozens of different apps and winding up more frustrated at the end of the process than when we started, our team took this challenge head-on. GrubBase Add-ons are purpose-built to make dealing with these different food variations seamless and easy.
Let’s reconsider our comparison of skinless vs. skin-on chicken breasts — this time, using GrubBase Add-ons.
- By default GrubBase will show you all of the Add-ons available for a particular food, in this case, Skin and Bone/Cartilage.
- Find the Add-ons you’d like to include, and update measured “without” to measured “with”.
- If an add-on is edible, you’ll see a fork and knife icon appear to the right of the Add-on. By default, GrubBase will assume that you are not consuming the Add-on. To instead mark an Add-on as consumed, simply click this icon.
Every step along the way, you will be able to see how different add-on combinations affect the nutrient values of the food you end up consuming. This empowers you to make the right choice for your body and gives you much greater flexibility when planning your meals.
If you want a meal planning app built for you and a modern lifestyle, consider signing up for a free GrubBase account today. You’ll find Add-ons integrated throughout GrubBase, including in the GrubBase Meal Planner and on every Food Info and Recipe page. You’ll also find a number of other features purpose-built to help you seamlessly integrate healthy habits into every day living.
