The Premium plugin gets you the Nutrition Label feature, but you’d have to fill in the values yourself. With the Pro and Elite Bundle we integrate with a Nutrition API to help calculate those values for you.
Where are these values coming from?
We integrate with (and pay for) the Spoonacular API.
Their API only supports English ingredients but by enabling the Translation API this feature can work seamlessly for any language! Even without the translation API you can still use this feature, but you’ll have to manually match every ingredient with an API product by searching for the English name. You’ll only have to do this once per ingredient. Next time you use the same ingredient it will remember the API product you picked.
It’s also possible to define custom nutrition ingredients if you have something specific to use or can’t find an ingredient in the API.
How to calculate nutrition facts
Once you’ve activated the Pro or Elite Bundle you’ll be able to use the “Calculate Nutrition Facts” button in the Nutrition section of the recipe modal:
Click on that blue button to start the calculation process.
The next screen you see lists all ingredients in your recipe and automatically tries to match them up with an ingredient in the API.
Click on a matched ingredient (or on “no match found”) to manually search for a better match. If your ingredients where not written in English you could search for the English translation here to make a match. This match will be remembered for this particular ingredient if you use it in a recipe again.
If you’re happy with the matched ingredients, click on the “Go to Next Step” button and wait for the API to fetch all the values. The next screen will show the values the API retrieved per ingredient and a preview of the totals.
You can make any manual changes you want here by clicking on the nutrition values for an ingredient.
To complete the calculation process, click on “Use These values”.This could be the end result for the recipe, for example:
You can make manual changes here, if required.
What nutrients can be calculated?
The API that we integrate with supports these nutrients:
- Calories
- Carbohydrates
- Protein
- Fat
- Saturated Fat
- Poly Unsaturated Fat
- Mono Unsaturated Fat
- Trans Fat
- Cholesterol
- Sodium
- Potassium
- Fiber
- Sugar
- Vitamin A
- Vitamin B1
- Vitamin B2
- Vitamin B3
- Vitamin B5
- Vitamin B6
- Vitamin B12
- Vitamin C
- Vitamin D
- Vitamin E
- Vitamin K
- Calcium
- Copper
- Folate
- Iron
- Manganese
- Magnesium
- Phosphorus
- Selenium
- Zinc
- Caffeine
- Alcohol
- Folic Acid
- Choline
- Net Carbohydrates
Only a fraction of them are enabled by default, but you can enable the ones you need through the WP Recipe Maker > Manage > Your Custom Fields > Custom Nutrients page. If a specific nutrient is missing we also have the option to create your own custom or calculated nutrients.
Why doesn’t the serving size get calculated?
The serving size would be the weight of 1 serving. This heavily depends on how the ingredients are prepared, so it’s not possible to automatically calculate those values. You could manually add that in, if you want, but it’s not required.
Calculating nutrition facts for all recipes at once
Unfortunately it’s not possible to bulk calculate the nutrition facts for all recipes at once. The problem is that an automated solution is never perfect. By manually going through the steps you can double check the ingredient it matches with and if the unit you’ve used is actually recognized by the API.
We prefer not showing nutrition facts to showing incorrect or confusing values.