Water Loss Exceeds Available Water
nutraCoster can can fully account for nutrient changes during processing, including water loss during baking, fat gain during frying, etc.
Sometimes when you are creating a label or nutrition report for a recipe with water loss, you will receive a message similar to the following.
The water loss specified for (recipe name) exceeds available water.
- Water will be reported as 0.
- Recipe yield will be inaccurate.
Here is information about why this happens, and how to troubleshoot it.
As an example, suppose you have a recipe with 100 lbs total ingredient weight, and you have specified 10 lbs of water loss. The Processing Yield is 90%.
If you receive the water loss warning nutraCoster is telling you that there is not 10 lbs of water in the recipe. This means that the total water content (the water nutrient in the Nutrition window) of all of the ingredients is less than 10 lbs.
Most of the items in the USDA library have water listed as one of the nutrients. If you have added items to the Master Items List, make sure you have included the water content when you entered the nutrition values.
You can determine the water content of the ingredients using the Recipe/Formula Nutrition Contribution by Ingredient report.
1. In the Nutrient Changes Due to Processing tab of the Change Recipe/Formula window, make a note of the water loss in your recipe. (For easier comparison, first change the water loss unit to grams.)
2. In the Production Tab of the Change Recipe/Formula window set the Processing Yield of your recipe back to 100% so there are no losses. Make a note of the Processing Yield weight. Save the recipe.
3. Choose Print, Nutrition Reports, Recipe/Formula Nutrition Contribution by Ingredient from the menu.
4. Select your recipe in the list of recipes. Click the Serving Sizes tab and set the Serving Size to the total Processing Yield weight from step 2.
5. Click the Options tab. Open the bottom dropdown (set to Sodium by default) and choose Water (it's right under Sodium).
6. Click Create Report.
The report will list each ingredient, and will list the water content of each. This should immediately show you which ingredients have water and which do not. The total water is reported at the bottom of the water column. This total must be greater than the water loss specified for the recipe.
If some ingredients are missing water, obtain the correct water content and enter it into nutraCoster.
If all of the ingredients have the correct water content, and you still receive the water loss warning, carefully check the yields you have entered:
- Individual ingredient weights.
- Total ingredient weight.
- Weight before cooking (Production Yield).
- Weight after cooking (Processing Yield).