Nutrition methodology
Calculated from recipe quantities. Useful estimates, not laboratory assays.
CERNERE nutrition panels are calculated from the measured ingredient quantities and stated serving yield in each recipe. They are there to make recipes easier to compare and plan with, not to imply impossible precision.
The basic calculation
Each nutrient-bearing ingredient is mapped to documented food-composition data. The ingredient amount is multiplied by the source value per 100 g, the recipe totals are summed, and those totals are divided by the stated number of servings.
That is the same arithmetic exposed in the free browser-only nutrition calculator: grams used × value per 100 g ÷ 100, then sum the ingredients and divide by servings.
Food-composition sources
The current cookbook projects use Food Standards Australia New Zealand food-composition resources, including the Australian Food Composition Database and AUSNUT 2023, with documented mappings or suitable product-label proxies where a generic database item cannot represent a compound packaged food accurately.
Where a nutrient is not in the Australian data. The Australian databases do not carry every nutrient. Vitamin C, for example, is absent from the AUSNUT release this site computes from. Where an article needs a figure the Australian data does not hold, it cites USDA FoodData Central and names the food identifier, so the exact record can be checked. That happens in article text only. Recipe nutrition panels are computed entirely from the Australian data, because a panel that silently mixed two databases would be adding up values from two different food definitions and two different analytical methods.
What a certified value would look like. There is a stricter tier than any database. The US National Institute of Standards and Technology sells certified reference materials — a jar of peanut butter, an infant formula, a meat homogenate — with certified mass fractions for fat, elements and vitamins, so that laboratories can validate their own methods against a known sample. A NIST certified value is one for which, in their words, they have the highest confidence in its accuracy. About a dozen food matrices exist, they cost thousands of dollars, and none of them is dinner. That tier is what the word “estimate” on this page is measured against: a composition database is a representative value for a food, arrived at honestly, and it is not the same thing as an analysis of what you cooked.
Sources: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central, SR Legacy. Retrieved 31 August 2026. · National Institute of Standards and Technology. Certificate of Analysis, Standard Reference Material 2387: Peanut Butter. NIST. Retrieved 31 August 2026.
Why your meal will not match to the decimal
Food-composition databases describe representative foods, not the exact tomato, yoghurt, loaf or packet in your kitchen. Brands, produce, draining, cooking loss, substitutions, final yield and how portions are divided can all change the result.
For that reason the public panels are described as approximate per serving. A calculated estimate should not be presented as a laboratory analysis of the finished dish.
Seasoning and optional ingredients
Nutrition follows the specified base formulation. Discretionary finishing salt, pepper or optional additions are not silently invented into the calculation. If you change the recipe, your result changes too.
Need to calculate your own version?
Use the free calculator with per-100 g values from a food-composition source or the product label you actually use, or print the nutrition calculation worksheet and do the same arithmetic on paper.
Nutrition information is general food information, not personalised medical or dietetic advice.
