How to use the meal calculator
Building your first meal takes less than a minute.
1. Search for a food
In the calculator, type a name in the search box. Results appear as you type, with the calories for a typical serving. The search understands everyday words: “scallion” finds green onions, “garbanzo” finds chickpeas, “courgette” finds zucchini.
Or tap one of the shortcuts for common foods, like chicken breast, rice and eggs.
2. Tap to add
One tap puts the food in your meal with a typical amount. You don't have to pick the amount first. If you tapped the wrong one, tap Undo in the message that appears.
3. Adjust the amount
On the food's own line you change the amount with the plus and minus buttons or by typing, and pick the unit (grams, ounces or a serving). The totals change right away.
Two things that make a real difference:
- Raw or cooked. Pick the line that matches how you weighed the food. 100 g of raw rice and 100 g of cooked rice have very different calories. The screen warns you and offers to switch.
- Edible portion. The values are for what you eat, without peel, bone or pit. If you weighed the fruit with its peel, the result will be a bit higher than the real one.
4. Read the totals
The bar at the bottom of the screen shows calories, protein, carbohydrate and fat all the time. Tap it to open the full result.
- Simple view: calories, protein, carbohydrate, fat, fiber and sodium.
- Complete view: everything the USDA data has, including minerals, vitamins and fatty acids.
When a food in the meal has no value for a nutrient, the total shows “at least” and a note says which foods are missing it. That is not the same as zero.
The % Daily Value (DV) compares the meal with a reference amount for adults. It is not your personal need.
5. Look at the charts
The charts show where the calories come from, how many grams of each nutrient the meal has and which food weighs most in the total. Every chart has a table version for anyone who prefers numbers.
6. Save it or take it with you
- Save: the meal is kept on this device and in this browser. If you clear your browser data, it's gone.
- Export: download a PDF (one page), an image, a CSV (for spreadsheets), or copy a link that reopens the meal on any device. The link carries the meal inside it: anyone with the link sees what's in it.
Install it on your phone
Liorno can be installed as an app, with no app store. On Android, use the Chrome menu and choose “Install app”. On iPhone, open it in Safari, tap Share and choose “Add to Home Screen”.
Need help?
See the FAQ and the sources and credits page.
Understanding the values
There is no "trace" in this database. Some nutrition tables mark amounts too small to measure as "trace" (Tr). The USDA table does not: a very small amount shows up as 0 or as a very small number. When you see 0, it can mean the nutrient is absent, below what the lab can detect, or not counted. In meal totals, 0 counts as zero.
Assumed zero. For some nutrients the USDA assumes the amount is zero because the food does not naturally contain it, for example fiber in meat. These values show as 0 and count as zero in meal totals. They were not measured, they were assumed.
No data. The table has no value for this nutrient in this food. The nutrient was not analyzed or not reported. No data is not zero. When a meal includes a food with no data for a nutrient, the total for that nutrient is shown as partial.
In the USDA table, carbohydrate is calculated by difference (100 g minus water, protein, fat and ash), so it includes dietary fiber and sugars. This is the same as "Total Carbohydrate" on the U.S. Nutrition Facts label, where fiber and sugars are shown underneath as parts of it. The % Daily Value for carbohydrate uses the full amount, fiber included.
U.S. labels list sodium, not salt. Table salt is about 40 % sodium: 1 gram of salt has roughly 400 mg of sodium. The FDA Daily Value for sodium is 2,300 mg a day, which is about 5.75 g of salt.
The USDA table gives total sugars for most foods (77 %), but it does not give added sugars, so this site cannot show the "Includes Added Sugars" line of the Nutrition Facts label. Total sugars include sugars that occur naturally, for example in fruit and milk.
Most cooked foods in the table were prepared in a lab, usually without added salt or fat (look for "without salt" in the name). Dishes you cook at home often have more sodium and more fat. The table also lists the raw and the cooked food as different rows: choose the row that matches the state in which you weighed the food. Cooked rice, pasta and beans weigh more than raw ones because they absorb water, so 100 g cooked has fewer calories than 100 g raw.
Household measures (cup, tablespoon, slice, medium fruit) are average weights from the USDA table. They vary with the size of the cup or the fruit and how it is packed or cut. When in doubt, weigh the food. Some foods have no household measure in the table; for those the site suggests a generic portion that is only an estimate.
Some foods are enriched or fortified: vitamins and minerals are added, for example iron, folic acid and B vitamins in flour and cereals. Their numbers can be much higher than in the same food without them.
Some entries were prepared with salt ("with salt") and others without ("without salt"). The only big difference between them is sodium.