If I have the nutrition facts for a food or recipe how can I determine how many starches, proteins, etc a food is? I don't attend the center but perhaps someone has asked one of the counselors this ? in the past? It would be useful and broaden our menus. Thanks for any input you can offer.

I am not on LAWL (calorie counter) but I keep track of what I eat each day, and keep track of the amount of fruit and veggies that I eat. (5+ a day)
When I make a recipe-I write down what all goes into it-and the divide that by how many servings the recipe makes. For instance-when I make a lasagna-I use tomato sauce that has 12 servings total...and I cut the lasagna into 12 pieces-so each piece has 1 veggie serving, etc.
With the way that LAWL food exchanges are set up-it is really easiest to "dress up" your food by keeping it simple for the most part. (no complicated casseroles, etc.)
If you are going to have a starch, a veggie, and a protein at dinner-then I think it is easiest to make a single recipe with those items. Cut up your chicken and stir fry it with a handful of stir fry veggies...add a little brown rice or pasta (whatever starch you are allowed) and flavor it with spices.
I do know that LAWL has a cookbook that has recipes already with the exchanges divided up. I don't know how much it costs at the centers, but I have seen it on Ebay and I am sure that you can get it cheaper there.

I also wanted to chime in here - what LAWL counts as a serving is NOT what is normally considered a serving in most recipes I've seen. For example, most recipes either count a protein serving by the ounce or as 3oz as 1 serving. Since I'm on the purple plan, 8oz raw (7oz cooked) chicken is one serving - so 3oz would be about half. The starch servings are smaller than standard - usually 1/3 cup instead of 1/2 cup. And unfortunately, LAWL does not recommend mixing your proteins or starches - so mixing beans with meat is not something suggested.

Does this help? Or did I muddy the waters?

Julie