I was entering a recipe into the recipe builder on etools and noticed something strange.

I added 3 cups of cooked broccoli to the recipe. That works out to 0 points (as displayed by the item on the recipe builder). But the total points for the recipe went up to 3. At that point, the broccoli was the only ingredient I had entered. Then I entered 3 cups of cooked asparagus, which also shows up as 0 points, but the total for the recipe went up by 3 points again.

Can anyone shed some light on this? Has anyone else seen this happen?

The recipe builder takes into account all nutrition information. The free fruits/veggies are there, if you either exclude them when entering recipes into the recipe builder, or eat them separately. But if you put an ingredient into the recipe builder, it is simply not free, as it becomes part of a different recipe.

Thanks for the reply. So 0 point fruits and veggies aren't 0 points when used in recipes? That doesn't really make sense to me.

So just don't put the veggies and fruit in the recipe builder....

or put them in and then subtract the points.

The veggies probably come out to be zero, or close to it when you divide the portions of the recipe. For example those 6 points will be .5 per 12 serving recipe.

Or subtract or omit as stated above.

yeah our leader yesterday addressed this and she said to just omit fruit and veggies in the recipe builder so pts are accurate, we know they are in there but until they fix the recipe builder to just not put them in at all, less to worry about

Thanks for the responses! I'm glad it wasn't just me! I'll just omit the 0 point foods from recipes (so long as the quantity in the recipe still comes out to 0 points).

Think of it this way, if you buy a can of soup, the nutritional information takes into account the vegetables. The same with entrees, spaghetti sacue, etc. WW says in their information that fruits and vegetables are to be counted in recipes. It's in you plan book.

I maintain that it makes no sense to me why the values should count differently on the plan (which I couldn't find any information about in my online info). What is the difference between eating 1 cup of broccoli, 1 cup of carrots and 1 cup of peppers vs. eating 3 cups of the vegetables mixed in a stir fry for example? That's why I'll just keep doing what works and leave those things out of the recipe builder.

Personally if the vegetables are reasonable in amount I would leave them out of the recipe builder.

WW rationale for including veggies in recipes is that while someone might not overeat a plain servings of carrots, they might overeat them as part of carrolt cake.

I heard another explanation:

* if you can pull it out of whatever it is, like a salad, then it's 0 points.
* if you cannot pull it out of whatever it is, like a soup, pudding, cake, jello, then it counts towards points.