Q: I'm needing to calculate the calories for a fried item. Is there a best way to do this in Nutritionist Pro(TM)?
A: A great place to start is here http://www.eatrightstore.org/collections/restaurant-menu-labeling
Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, has some great training options on how to handle recipe analysis with using some industry standards and kitchen tests. For deep fat frying you have 2 options -- option 1 really being careful and doing your best in the kitchen with the kitchen team to perform some tests and then taking that data to Nutritionist Pro and plugging that in for the recipe. Or option 2 for deep fat fried items only use laboratory analysis and after you get the laboratory analysis done for ex like the fried chicken then you can come to Nutritionist Pro and add the fried chicken data as a custom ingredient and use it in sandwich or salad recipes as needed.
A software will have a hard time assessing fat absorption and moisture loss since there is no one formula we can use. Its based on food type, breading, type of oil, length of frying etc so we recommend those options above.