BigOven

i was all set to buy Big Oven, as i have been really frustrated with MasterCook 9s navigation, well, lack there of, but decided to download the Big Oven trial, and am glad i did!

1] there seems to be something not working right with the Nutrient info links, as almost all of the recipes have greyed out scales and can't display the nutritional info.  This is very important to me as i have dietary restrictions now, such as cutting out cholesterol.

2] There is a message in nutritional info claiming that if i edit the ingredients, the info can be displayed, but this often doesn't work either... it want's me to input a lot of info for common ingredients like eggs, etc, with weights?

I would really like to go with this software and move my massive mastercook collection over, but without the Nutrient linking working well i don't see this as a viable option...

 BigOven allows nutrition linking, but many recipes don't come pre-linked.  To link an ingredient line, double click on the scale icon, and link the ingredient with its underlying USDA record.  (All linkings you make between the shorthand way you might write an ingredient line and the underlying USDA record will be remembered for future recipes).

um, shouldn't linking in the database be pretty important, considering how long it would take to try to set this up?  a lot of the links seem to be missing because of "custom measures" such as saying 8 drumsticks, rather than 3 lbs of chicken.

also, i'm seeing a VERY large discrepancy between what Big Oven and MasterCook calculate for the same recipe!

i have to assume, since i have to make the links in Big Oven, that that is where the mistake is... and once again i am stuck with not being able to use the program because the nutritional information will not work accurately... i mean this is a HUGE difference!

here's my sample:

Per Serving: 324 Calories; 10g Fat (27.9% calories from fat); 24g Protein; 35g Carbohydrate; 2g Dietary Fiber; 82mg Cholesterol; 89mg Sodium.

Big Oven:  [per serving] 749 Calories; 41g Fat (63% calories from fat); 61g Protein; 32g Carbohydrate; 2g Dietary Fiber; 277mg Cholesterol; 563mg Sodium.

Hi Drew,

We're happy to take a look at the specific linking you're doing and the gram weights you're coming up with. Sounds like you may be choosing a different (either more or less accurate) nutritional item and/or amount than the one that MC comes up with.

For the same nutritional amount, and the same USDA ingredient, you should get the same value.  We work off of the USDA's SR16 database; not sure which one MasterCook is using.

As background, here's more information on why this "training" process is necessary for the nutrition-linking.  Since BigOven lets you import 170,000+ recipes with ingredients written in all kinds of different ways, we had to engineer a way for people to be able to handle all the different ways that people write an ingredient to a single nutritional record.

That is, we needed BigOven to be able to pull down any one of the recipes from the archive, and let the user associate, say, "Scallions" and "Green Onions" and "Small green onions", etc. to the right nutritional item.  MasterCook doesn't have this kind of web-based integration and sharing, and thus has a bit of data-luxury there at the expense of a major feature (web-based sharing and common ratings/photos, etc.).  They can force everyone on the front-end to "normalize" their data entry.  With BigOven, it's deliberately more flexible in letting you create shorthand ways of writing ingredients, and then linking them up.  BigOven will learn these over your use of the product, however, and it won't ask you repeatedly to match the same ingredient name with the shorthand you (or one of the other 500,000 members) may use.

i just reposted this thread in the more appropriate forum, but just to let you know, i have just tried again with a very simple recipe from bigoven.com, and paid careful attention to the links i had to make... and the program still told me that 4 servings of the "pork steak bake" had over 13 million calories!!  seriously.  calories: 687257%/13745136

Something is obviously incorrect on that one.  One guess -- do you have the serving size set correctly?  Can you email us the recipe and exactly what linkings and "serving size" you set?  You can email us at support @ bigoven.com.  Thanks

I just linked the same exact recipe and got a much more expectred result. 

Please see this thread:

http://www.bigoven.com/cs/forums/p/5911/8897.aspx#8897