Recipes is where you keep the dishes you cook. Add a recipe once and Loopa works out its nutrition from the ingredients. From there you can scale it, shop for it and log it to your diary.
Recipes are part of Loopa Premium and Loopa Premium Family. See What Loopa Basic includes for what stays free.
Where to find it
- iPhone and iPad: the Health hub, in The Log, tap Recipes.
- Android: the Health hub, in The Log, tap Recipes.
- On the web: Health → Nutrition → Recipes.
The Recipes home opens on Discover, My Recipes, Saved, Collections, Grocery List and Add Recipe.
Four ways to add a recipe
Tap Add Recipe on the Recipes home and choose how the recipe reaches you.
- Type it in. Start with a name, then add ingredients one at a time. Search the food database for each one, or scan a barcode.
- Paste a recipe. Paste the whole thing from a note, an email or a message: the name, the ingredients and the steps. Loopa reads it into lines you check before saving.
- Import from a link. Paste the address of a recipe page. Loopa reads the recipe from the page. Photos on the page are not imported, so add your own if you like.
- Photograph a recipe. Take a photo of a recipe card or a cookbook page, or choose one you already have.
On the web the same four choices read Start a blank recipe, Paste text, From a link and From a photo.
Loopa reads amounts the way recipes write them
- Fractions and mixed numbers: ½, 1 ½ and 1 1/2 all work.
- A range such as "2 to 3 cloves" is counted at the middle of the range, and your wording is kept on the line.
- "1 cup + 2 tbsp" is added together.
- "Salt to taste" stays on the ingredient list and counts as nothing toward the nutrition.
Check every line before you save
Every way in ends on the same screen: Check and save on iPhone and iPad, Check your recipe on Android. Nothing is saved until you save it here.
Each line shows its amount, its unit, the food it matched and any prep note, such as "minced" or "sifted". Tap a line to change the food, the amount, the unit or the note. Lines that need a second look are marked:
- No food matched. The line adds nothing to the totals. Pick the food and it counts.
- The food match is not certain. Check that the food is the one you meant.
- Estimated. Loopa had to estimate part of this line, for example how much a cup of it weighs.
You can also mark a line optional, and under Advanced set how much of an ingredient you actually eat. Lower it for frying oil, a marinade or pasta water that mostly stays behind.
Then set the servings, the prep and cook time, and tags for the meal, the cuisine and the diet. Add the cooked weight of the finished dish if you know it. That lets you log by the gram and shows nutrition per 100 g.
Not finished? Save as draft keeps it in My Recipes until you come back to it.
Nutrition is worked out from the ingredients
Loopa converts every line to grams, takes the nutrition of the food it matched, adds the lines up and divides by the servings. A volume such as a cup is converted using that food's own weight per cup, so a cup of flour and a cup of milk are weighed differently.
Each recipe shows a Nutrition Facts panel for one serving, with % Daily Value worked out from the FDA's Daily Values. A nutrient that none of the matched foods reports is left blank rather than shown as zero.
When any line is an estimate, the recipe says Nutrition estimated. Tap it to see which lines, and fix their matches for a firmer number. You can fix a match whenever you like, and the nutrition is worked out again when you save.
Food data gets better over time. When a food your recipe uses is updated, your recipe shows Nutrition data updated. Review, and one tap recalculates it from today's data.
Photos of a recipe, and where the picture goes
On iPhone, iPad and Android, the text in your photo is read on the phone itself. Only the text is sent to Loopa. The picture stays on your device unless you choose to use it as the recipe's photo.
On the web, the picture is uploaded and read on Loopa's server, then deleted straight away, unless you tick Also use this picture as the recipe photo. The web takes JPEG, PNG or WebP up to 10 MB. Convert a HEIC photo to JPEG first.
A recipe photo is resized and its location data removed before it is stored.
When Loopa reads a recipe with AI, it shows you what is sent and asks first. See AI and your information.
Imported recipes stay private
A recipe you import from a link carries Imported from and the site's name. It is yours to cook, scale, save and log. It stays in your own recipes and is not shared to the community, and neither is a copy of it, so the original author's work stays theirs.
Copy & modify
Found a recipe you want to change? Copy & modify makes your own private copy to edit however you like. It is labeled Based on the recipe it came from, and the original is untouched.
Editing, deleting and exporting
- Edit. Every save keeps your earlier version. Meals you already logged keep the numbers from the day you logged them.
- Delete. A deleted recipe goes to Recently deleted in My Recipes for 30 days, and you can restore it there. After 30 days it is removed for good. Anything you logged from it stays in your diary.
- Export. Download one recipe, or all of them, as JSON or as a printable page you can save as a PDF.
Limits
- Up to 30 imports a day, counting pasted text, photos and links together.
- Up to 80 ingredient lines and 60 steps in one recipe.
If your Premium ends
Your recipes stay yours. My Recipes keeps opening, and you can read, scale, export and delete your own recipes, restore one you deleted, and take a shared recipe back to private. Adding, importing and editing recipes, Discover, Saved, collections, the grocery list and Copy to meal are part of Loopa Premium, and open again when you subscribe.
Sources
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration: Daily Value on the Nutrition and Supplement Facts Labels.
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration: How to Understand and Use the Nutrition Facts Label.
See also
