Turkey and Vegetable Pasta: where the numbers come from

Per ingredient

Oxalate

69 mg per serving (275 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.

Passata

The OHF lists no passata. Canned tomato is used, which is the same fruit strained.

Smoked Paprika

The OHF lists paprika without distinguishing smoked, so the plain figure is used.

Zucchini

Zucchini is a summer squash and the OHF groups them.

Low Sodium Stock

Prepared liquid stock is water with roughly one to two per cent solids. The OHF lists no stock, and treating it as an unknown would put an unresolved line in a third of the recipes on the site over a contribution too small to change a band.

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.

Turkey Mince

Weighed raw before it is browned or poached into fine crumbs; the cooked mince record was rejected because the weight is taken raw.

Pasta

Weighed dry, before boiling, and used where the recipe says pasta without naming a grain. A recipe asking for wholemeal by name uses the separate wholemeal-pasta ingredient, which carries three times the fibre.

Carrot

Weighed raw, peeled and sliced or grated, before any cooking; ledger key carried over verbatim from the published book.

Zucchini

Weighed raw, diced or grated, before cooking; ledger key carried over verbatim from the published book.

Celery

Weighed raw and diced before it is softened in the pan; the raw record matches the ledger canonical for celery.

Passata

Measured straight from the bottle as strained tomatoes; the commercial tomato puree record is AUSNUT's closest equivalent, as there is no passata entry and the canned whole tomato records include undrained juice.

Low Sodium Stock

Measured as ready-to-use reduced-salt chicken or vegetable liquid stock; ledger canonical key for stock, and the all-flavours record covers both.

Olive Oil

Measured from the bottle, plain or extra-virgin; AUSNUT has a single olive oil record and the ledger key is carried over verbatim.

Smoked Paprika

AUSNUT has no smoked paprika record, so the ground dried paprika record is used; ledger key carried over verbatim from the published book.

Dried Oregano

Weighed dry from the jar in 1-3 g amounts; ledger key carried over verbatim from the published book.

Parmesan

Weighed as a hard cheese and grated at the point of use; the fresh parmesan record matches the ledger canonical and is preferred over the dried finely grated record, which is far more concentrated.

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.