Kale and Spinach Dhal with Yoghurt and Basmati Rice: where the numbers come from

Per ingredient

Oxalate

116 mg per serving (464 mg for the whole recipe, divided by 4). This comes from the Oxalosis and Hyperoxaluria Foundation list rather than the Australian composition data above, which does not carry oxalate.

Baby Spinach

The OHF publishes only cooked spinach. Recipes here use it raw as well, and raw spinach is the higher of the two per 100 g because boiling leaches oxalate away, so a raw-spinach dish is understated by this figure rather than overstated.

Water

Tap water carries no oxalate: oxalate is a plant metabolite and drinking water is not a plant.

Oxalate in a plant moves with variety, ripeness, soil and cooking, and what you absorb depends on the calcium eaten in the same meal rather than on the figure alone. The full table and what it is worth.

Not counted

These lines contribute nothing to the figures above, because they carry no weight or no composition match. Finishing salt and pepper added to taste are deliberately excluded: the amount is the cook's, so counting it would be inventing a number.

• Ground black pepper, to taste

Why these records

Where a generic database item cannot represent an ingredient exactly, the choice is recorded with the ingredient rather than left to inference.

Red Lentils

Recipe weighs 220 g red lentils, rinsed, before simmering, so the hulled dry record applies; the canned lentil record used in the ledger is a different product and would badly understate the dry weight's density.

Water

Contributes no energy or nutrients but mapped honestly rather than skipped; tap water is what the recipes use, and the ledger left this unkeyed.

Onion

Weighed raw and peeled before it is softened in the pan; ledger key carried over verbatim from the published book.

Garlic

Weighed or counted as raw peeled cloves before cooking; ledger key carried over verbatim from the published book.

Fresh Ginger

Weighed raw and peeled before slicing or grating; the dried ground ginger record is a separate site ingredient and would be far too concentrated here.

Ground Cumin

Measured dry from the jar; the ground cumin seed record matches the ledger canonical for cumin.

Ground Coriander

Ground dried coriander seed from the spice jar, not the fresh leaf, weighed as the dry powder the recipe spoons in.

Mild Curry Powder

Measured dry from the jar; the plain curry powder record is the only spice-blend entry and no mild-specific record exists.

No-Added-Salt Canned Tomatoes

Ingredient name explicitly specifies no added salt, matching this record exactly; ledger key carried over verbatim from the published book.

Kale

Weighed raw with the stems already stripped, which is how a recipe asks for it and how the raw record is measured. Cooking wilts it without changing what went into the pan.

Baby Spinach

Weighed raw and wilted in the pan or eaten raw in salads; ledger key carried over verbatim from the published book.

Neutral cooking oil

Ingredient names an unspecified neutral cooking oil, so the not-further-defined oil record is the honest match; it is also the more conservative choice on saturated fat than naming canola or sunflower.

Low-Fat Yoghurt

Recipe lines say plain low-fat yogurt, and AUSNUT has an explicit low fat (under 0.5%) tier, so it is preferred over the reduced fat (~2%) record which describes a different labelled product.

Basmati Rice

Nutrition is computed on the dry basis. Cooked rice has no reproducible composition: its nutrient density depends entirely on how much water was absorbed, which varies by method and cook. The nutrients come from the dry grain and cooking only adds water, so recipes weigh this ingredient dry and state the cooked amount in the method.

Lemon Juice

Measured as squeezed juice, not whole fruit; ledger key carried over verbatim from the published book.

Flat Leaf Parsley

Weighed raw as fresh leaves for finishing; ledger key carried over verbatim from the published book.

Salt

Weighed or added to taste from the packet; iodised table salt matches the fine salt the recipes specify, and the ledger key is carried over verbatim.

What this is and is not

These figures match the ones shown on the recipe page exactly, because both come from this same arithmetic.

A composition database gives representative values for a food, not an analysis of your tin, your loaf or your cut of meat. Brands differ, produce varies, and yields change with how long something cooked and how hard it was drained. Treat every figure here as an estimate of the right order rather than a measurement, and where a number matters clinically, take it to whoever is managing your care. CERNERE publishes the working so it can be argued with, not to imply a precision food does not have.