Nutrition & carbon

Cocotte shows nutrition facts and a carbon footprint for every recipe, adds them up in the planner, and flags possible nutrient shortfalls. This page explains where the numbers come from, how they are computed, and what their limits are.

Important

All figures are estimates meant to help you compare recipes and spot obvious gaps. They are not medical or dietary advice and not a certified carbon audit. Talk to a health professional for personal nutrition needs.

Where the data comes from

Everything is computed from the ingredients. Each ingredient in the library stores:

• nutrition values per 100 g (or 100 ml): calories, protein, carbs, fat, fiber, iron, vitamin B12, calcium, omega-3 and zinc,
• a carbon footprint in kg CO₂e per kg (or litre) of product,
• its months of peak season, if any,
• its allergens, and whether they have been checked.

The values come from two places:

Source	Used for
The built-in library (seed_common_ingredients)	Nutrition rounded from common food composition tables (Ciqual/USDA). Carbon footprint from Agribalyse (ADEME/INRAE) and Poore & Nemecek (2018) via Our World in Data.
Suggest values when a user creates an ingredient	Macronutrients (calories, protein, carbs, fat, fiber) from Open Food Facts. Carbon footprint from Agribalyse's "climate change" indicator. See Create a missing ingredient.

These are category-level averages, not lab measurements or values for a specific producer. For a food's carbon footprint, the production method (meat and dairy versus plant-based, in particular) matters far more than transport distance.

Warning

Ingredients created on the fly without values count as zero. The same goes for ingredients created automatically by the YouTube import script or by a Cooklang import made before it opened the recipe form. A recipe that uses them will look lighter and lower-carbon than it really is. Admins can complete them in the Ingredient library.

How per-serving nutrition is computed

For each ingredient line of a recipe:

1. The quantity is converted to grams:

   Unit	Counted as
   g, ml	1 g
   kg, l	1,000 g
   piece	100 g
   tbsp	15 g
   tsp	5 g
   pinch	1 g

2. The grams are multiplied by the ingredient's values per 100 g.

3. All lines are added up for the whole recipe, then divided by the recipe's servings.

The recipe page's Nutrition facts card shows the result per serving: calories, protein, carbs, fat, iron, vitamin B12, calcium, omega-3 and zinc.

Note

Liquids are counted with the density of water (1 ml = 1 g), and a piece is always 100 g, whether it's an egg, a lemon or a pumpkin. For accurate figures, enter quantities in grams where you can.

Every ingredient line counts, so an ingredient used in two sections of a recipe is counted twice, once per line. The alternatives an author suggests for an ingredient (vegan milk instead of milk, for example) are not included: the figures always describe the recipe as written.

Carbon footprint

The carbon footprint of a recipe is the sum over its ingredients of:

quantity in grams × ingredient's kg CO₂e per kg ÷ 1,000

using the same unit conversion as above. The result is in kg CO₂e (kilograms of CO₂ equivalent, which includes other greenhouse gases).

Where you see it:

• the recipe page: Carbon footprint (per serving) in the Nutrition facts card (or below the ingredients of an imported recipe whose steps you can't see),
• the recipe list: a leaf badge on each recipe showing its footprint per serving (for example 0.42 kg CO₂e / serving),
• the planner: This week's carbon footprint in Nutritional intake. It's the total of the displayed period, with each meal scaled to its planned servings.

When none of a recipe's ingredients has a carbon value (often the case for a freshly imported recipe), the footprint is hidden rather than shown as 0 kg CO₂e. Values follow the interface language's number format (0,42 in French, 0.42 in English).

Carbon levels

The Carbon impact per serving filter of the recipe list sorts recipes into three levels based on their footprint per serving:

Level	Per serving
Low	0.5 kg CO₂e or less
Medium	more than 0.5, up to 1.5 kg CO₂e
High	more than 1.5 kg CO₂e

The leaf badge on recipe cards uses the same three colours: green, amber and red.

For comparison, a plant-based main dish is usually in the low band, while a portion of beef easily reaches the high band.

Weekly deficiency alerts

Note

This feature is off by default and must be turned on by the instance administrator (see Configuration). If it's off, the planner's nutritional intake summary never lists any deficiency and the home page's badge never appears, regardless of what's planned.

The planner's Nutritional intake dialog (and the badge on the home page's This week strip) warns you when your planned meals may not cover some nutrients.

How it works

1. Cocotte first checks that the period is planned enough to be meaningful: at least half of its days must have at least one meal (4 days for a week, 1 for a single day, 16 for a 31-day month; several meals on the same day count once). Otherwise no alert is computed and the dialog says so instead, for example: No alerts yet: only 1 day(s) in this period have a planned meal. Plan at least 4 days to get meaningful nutrition alerts. The home page badge doesn't appear either.
2. Cocotte adds up the nutrients of every meal in the displayed period, each scaled by planned servings ÷ recipe servings.
3. It divides the total by the number of days in the period: 7 for a week, or the number of days of the month in month view. Days with nothing planned still count.
4. It compares this daily average with the daily minimums for your diet and activity level (set in Your account).
5. Each nutrient below its minimum is listed as average / minimum.

The daily minimums

Six nutrients are checked. Calories, carbs, fat and fiber are shown on recipes but not checked.

Nutrient	Flexitarian	Vegetarian	Vegan
Protein	50 / 65 / 100 g	50 / 65 / 100 g	50 / 65 / 100 g
Iron	10 mg (12 mg athlete)	14 mg (16.8 mg athlete)	18 mg (21.6 mg athlete)
Zinc	10 mg (12 mg athlete)	13 mg (15.6 mg athlete)	13 mg (15.6 mg athlete)
Vitamin B12	2.4 µg	2.4 µg	2.4 µg
Calcium	950 mg	950 mg	950 mg
Omega-3	1.1 g	1.1 g	1.1 g

Protein depends on the activity level: Sedentary 50 g, Moderate 65 g, Athlete 100 g. Iron and zinc are higher for vegetarian and vegan diets, because the body absorbs them less well from plants. They are also multiplied by 1.2 for athletes.

These thresholds are deliberately simplified. They are loaded by the seed_nutrient_requirements command. If you see no alerts at all, ask your administrator to check that it was run (see First run).

Tip

Vitamin B12 is almost absent from unfortified plant foods. On a vegan diet, a B12 alert is expected unless you plan fortified foods: it's a reminder, not an error.

Reading the alerts sensibly

• The summary only knows what is in the planner. Unplanned breakfasts, snacks and drinks aren't counted, so a partly planned week will almost always show alerts. That's why nothing is flagged until at least half of the days have a meal (see step 1 above): an almost empty week would otherwise flag nearly every nutrient.
• Iron, B12, calcium, omega-3 and zinc are only as good as the ingredient data. Ingredients created with Suggest values have no micronutrients unless someone typed them in.
• For a shared agenda, the thresholds of the agenda's owner are used.

Seasonality

Each ingredient can list its months of peak season. An ingredient with no months ticked is considered available all year (most dry goods, dairy, oils and spices in the library).

A recipe is in season when none of its ingredients is out of season in the current month. This is used by:

• the In-season ingredients only filter of the recipe list and the random recipe,
• the In season now section of the home page,
• the Produits de saison thematic page.

Cooking with produce that is in season usually means less energy-intensive production and transport.

Allergen data

Allergens are attached to ingredients. A recipe's allergens are those of its ingredients. Cocotte knows the 14 allergens that must be declared in the EU plus lactose: gluten, milk, lactose, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, soy, fish, crustaceans, molluscs, celery, mustard, sesame, sulphites and lupin.

Each ingredient also has a "reviewed" flag, which says that someone has checked its allergens:

• Library ingredients are all reviewed. An ingredient with no allergen listed has been checked and contains none.
• Ingredients created by users are reviewed only if they have at least one allergen ticked, or if the creator ticked I checked: this ingredient contains none of the listed allergens. Ingredients created automatically by the YouTube import script (or by a Cooklang import made before it opened the recipe form) are never reviewed.

When at least one ingredient of a recipe is not reviewed, the recipe shows Allergens not verified for some ingredients. The absence of a badge then proves nothing.

Warning

The Exclude allergens filter only hides recipes with a known allergen. Recipes with unverified ingredients are not hidden. Processed products (stock cubes, sauces, charcuterie…) vary between brands. Allergen information in Cocotte is indicative: always check product labels.

Credits

• Open Food Facts: packaged-product nutrition facts, used to suggest macronutrients when creating an ingredient.
• Agribalyse (ADEME/INRAE): life-cycle environmental impact data for food products, used for carbon-footprint suggestions and for the seeded ingredient library.
• Poore & Nemecek (2018), via Our World in Data: secondary reference for category-level carbon footprint averages in the seeded library.