The DIY Diet

The main premise of the DIY Diet is that you can eat the foods you love. That includes the favorite foods you are accustomed to preparing at home for yourself, your family, and friends.

In order for me to know approximately how many calories I was eating in the foods I prepared at home, I decided I’d probably have to figure out the calories in each of the ingredients then divide the total calories by the number of servings for that item.

I figured the cooking or baking may change the character of the ingredient but it would not disappear so the calories would likely remain in the prepared product. Food scientists no doubt have more sophisticated methods for doing these calculations, and maybe my logic isn’t exactly right, but I think it is fine for my purposes.

I figured I’d only have to calculate out the calories once for each recipe. I keep the calculations in my food diary so that the information is readily available to me for the next time I use the recipe.

As much as possible, I use the information contained in the Nutrition Facts Label on the container holding the ingredients I’m using for my recipe. If a Nutrition Facts Label is not available, I go to Corinne Netzer’s book, The Complete Book of Food Counts to look up the information. Various online sources provide calorie counts, too: Calorie-Count.com and CalorieLab.com.

One day when I expected visitors, I decided I’d like to make my Uncle Chet’s Cheese Pie to serve for dessert and wondered how many calories a serving of the dessert would have. The calorie count would impact what I’d serve for lunch - high calorie dessert, low calorie entrée. My Uncle Chet was a baker and developed some of his own recipes. Cheese pie is one of my favorites from when I was growing up.

The first step in this recipe is preparing a graham cracker crust to fit a 9" pie pan. The recipe calls for 1-1/2 cups of graham cracker crumbs and said that 18 graham crackers were needed to make that amount of crumbs. Did that mean 18 full sheets or just what size crackers were called for in the recipe?

I knew from the graham cracker Nutrition Facts Label that a serving size was considered two full sheets and the calorie count was 130 for the two sheets or 65 calories per sheet. I decided to crush up one full sheet to see how many crumbs it would make.

One sheet made three tablespoons of crumbs, less than a quarter of a cup. Since there are 16 tablespoons in a cup there should be 24 tablespoons in 1-1/2 cups. If one sheet of graham crackers made three tablespoons of crumbs then I figured I need eight full sheets of graham crackers to make 1-1/2 cups of crumbs. At 65 calories per sheet that meant my 1-1/2 cups of crumbs equaled 520 calories.

The next ingredient was four tablespoons of sugar. That one was easy. The Complete Book of Food Counts says granulated sugar is 16 calories per teaspoon. Knowing there are three teaspoons in a tablespoon, a tablespoon of sugar is 48 calories. For the four tablespoons of sugar needed for the recipe, the calorie count would be 192 calories. (Here are some common cooking measurement conversions.)

Butter, the next ingredient was equally easy. The recipe called for five tablespoons. The butter I buy, unsalted, is 100 calories so that means there are 500 calories worth of butter in the graham cracker crust.

The filling recipe calls for eight ounces of softened cream cheese. My package of Kraft Philadelphia brand Cream Cheese states that 1 oz. of cream cheese is 100 calories, therefore the eight ounces required for the filling totals 800 calories.

Further, the filling recipe calls for 2-1/2 tablespoons of granulated sugar. Granulated sugar is 48 calories per tablespoon so 2-1/2 tablespoons is 120 calories.

The recipe calls for 1/4 cup of milk. I’ve chosen to use skim milk which is 90 calories per 8-oz. cup so 1/4 cup (2 oz.) of an 8-oz. cup of skim milk is 22.5 calories rounded up to 23 calories.

Two eggs total 156 calories. According to The Complete Book of Food Counts, one large, whole egg is 75 calories. I use extra large, whole eggs, so I increase the calorie count a little, to 78 calories per egg.

The recipe also calls for a pinch of salt, no calories there. Here’s how the calories for the filling stack up.

Uncle Chet’s Cheese Pie recipe also calls for a pineapple topping. I use two 8-oz cans of Dole Crushed Pineapple including the juice. The Nutrition Facts Label on the can says that 1/2 cup of product constitutes one serving, there are 2 servings per can, and the calorie count per serving is 80 calories. Very clear and straightforward. Two 8-oz. cans of crushed pineapple equals two cups, therefore, the calorie count is 320 calories for the recipe quantity.

The recipe further calls for 3 tablespoons of corn starch mixed with 1/4 cup of cold water. The water has no calories. Corn starch, according to the Nutrition Facts Label on the box of Argo Corn Starch, is 30 calories per tablespoon. Since the recipe calls for 3 tablespoons of corn starch, we add 90 calories to our recipe. The topping recipe follows:

Here’s how the calorie count looks as we complete Uncle Chet’s Cheese Pie:

That’s how I do my calculations. For my purposes, I think they are OK.

You can do the calculations on your own favorite family recipes. Knowledge is power. Knowing the calorie counts on your favorite foods will serve you well.

A 340-calorie dessert is fairly high in calories but cutting the pie into 12 servings at 227 calories is an option, though it would look rather skimpy.

You could eliminate the cooked pineapple topping and opt to cut fresh pineapple over the top at serving time. If you used 1/4 cup of fresh pineapple on each piece it would bring the calorie count down to 308. Substituting 1/4 cup fresh strawberries for the pineapple you could bring the calorie count down to 299 per slice. Use your imagination.

Here’s the compact version of Uncle Chet’s Cheese Pie recipe that you can print in the event you’d like to make it to serve to your guests.