About Our Nutritional Analyses

In figuring Times recipe analyses, several assumptions are made. Unless otherwise specified, butter is assumed to be salted; flour is assumed to be all-purpose; oil is assumed to be canola; chicken is assumed to be skinless breast meat, and optional ingredients are not included.

Also, percentage of fat is not included in recipe analyses. This is because such figures can be very misleading when applied to a single recipe, rather than to an entire diet.

Current nutritional wisdom holds that fat should not make up more than 30% of the total calories consumed in a day. Since each gram of fat--regardless of type--contains nine calories, this is relatively easy to calculate for recipes analyzed by The Times: Multiply the number of grams of fat by nine, then divide by the total number of calories. But it is important to remember that these guidelines apply to your total diet, not to each individual dish.

Recipe analyses for The Times are done by Bruce Henstell of Nutricomm.