Canadian Nutrient File Recipe Proportions

What are the ingredients of the lasagna or the spinach soufflé in the Canadian Nutrient File (CNF)? The CNF contains many recipes for which we can only guess the ingredient proportion. In these documents we have attempted to quantify the ingredients in these CNF recipes.

What is considered a recipe in the database? It is a food containing significant portions of different food groups. For example, pizza contains bread, meat, vegetables and cheese - four food groups. Please note that other foods might contain more than one food group but not enough to be significant; therefore they are considered a food with one food group only (e.g. breaded chicken; strawberry milkshake).

Here is what you need to know before accessing the recipes of the foods in the CNF.

1. Threshold = 20%. While building the recipes, we have tried to match the profile to be within 20% of the CNF macronutrient profile. The recipes are not an exact match of the CNF profile but are the best estimate we were able to develop.
2. Moisture change: In calculating the nutrient profile according to each ingredient, the change in moisture is taken into account. The cooking process and the type of ingredients (raw or cooked) determines the moisture change within a recipe. When a moisture change is applied, the water content from every ingredient will be affected, but not the total weight of the recipe. For example, in a recipe of dried papaya, the sugar is not affected (since the water content is 0) but the papaya is. The total quantity of the whole recipe is not affected by the moisture change, it is the water contained in the papaya that is. When applicable, the moisture change is indicated as a percentage at the end of the recipe.

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