Motivated by the needs of my diabetic granddaughter to calculate the carbohydrates in her meals I have, over the years, developed a rather neat spreadsheet to do this automatically for any recipe. This also allowed me to automatically calculate any other nutritional requirement others might have … [feeling very smug emoji]
Today I discovered that if you simply copy ANY recipe into ChatGPT it will calculate all that for you. I might be the very last person on the planet to realise this but if anyone else wants to know how many calories (or whatever) in their recipe just ask ChatGPT.
Not sure what isn’t right? The diabetes calc was the spur, the calorie counting was a secondary benefit (although I noted your comment about carbs and weight earlier).
Out of curiosity I just checked into a diabetic forum and discovered the method is currently being discussed at the moment. I felt out of my depth when they discussed whether fiber or fiber was included in ChatGPT calculations!
Out of curiosity Corona, do you have a medical background? I have noted some of your observations on other threads.
No but I do have an inpatient background and not having the desire to end up back there I started looking into things of interest. 3 of my 4 friends have achieved remission from type 2, the fourth is a lovely chap but a hopeless case
I keep some of my bulkier ingredients, such as rice, sugar, flour etc. in separate bins in a drawer. Rather than lift out the whole bin, I just tend to scoop out what I need straight into the mixing bowl with a special long handled scoop. I have no idea what the volume of the scoop is. It came free with some long forgotten appliance years ago and has been used for as long as I can remember. It doesn’t even have a name. Sometimes it is called a “thingymajig” or often a “wotsit”. Nevertheless, I know EXACTLY how many scoops to use of various ingredients for any dishes that I make quite often. And the recipe always turns out perfectly.
The problem comes when someone asks for a recipe that I have used. If I quote the number of thingymajigs to use they would have no idea what amount I meant. The problem is made worse when I explain that I have a few useful bits and pieces that have the same name.
I could convert the volume of the flour thingamajig to something people think that they can relate to such as cups BUT then I would have the same problem mentioned in my original post.
Surely it makes sense to convert my ingredient measurements to something 98% of the world population uses as a matter of course and 100% understands unambiguously. Even the Americans went metric, as their preferred system of measurement, in 1975 but have continued to ignore it. Luddites are confined to UK
Well I am starting to warm to the idea of ChatGPT. I did a test by using my own spreadsheet to calculate the data for my Scones Recipe and then compared it with what the results given by ChatGPT when asked to do the same thing. Here is a screen shot of the results. I am amazed how well they agree - especially the costs.
I’ve been using it, plus a few others, professionally to pull data together for an overview of current developments. It saves a lot of time and spade work reading papers, cross-referencing etc. The aspects that bother me are that it’s only as good as the training dataset (2024 papers were completely missing just a few weeks ago) and that it will overlook key but minor details that a knowledgeable human would see. Also if I don’t read for myself, I miss out on the detailed knowledge in the papers, only obtaining an overview that may not even be entirely correct.
It’s really important to see it as another tool, rather than treat it like a human expert who is sharing their knowledge and understanding.
