Anna-Maria Volanaki (SENr, BDA)

Anna-Maria Volanaki is the Head Nutritionist of a top cooking website in Greece. She is a registered sports nutritionist (SENr, BDA) and her mission is to educate people and make them understand the nutrition content of a recipe or food and help them make more informed food choices. She explains how the use of Nutritics helps her efficiently manage over 5000 recipes, while ensuring accuracy of nutrition information.

The company she works for was founded by a famous chef in Greece who is mostly known for his up-to-date cooking website. Moreover, the company deals with publishing cooking magazines and cookbooks, as well as producing cooking shows. The company’s CEO owns four restaurants and an e-shop which has various utensils and kitchen equipment.

Anna-Maria not only does the recipe analysis and nutrition information calculation for the company’s website, books, TV shows, magazines and restaurants, she is also working on new healthy recipe ideas in collaboration with the company’s chefs. She writes articles related to nutrition and exercise for the company’s website and magazine

The very detailed and accurate analysis of all 5,000 recipes turned out to be a massive undertaking which is why she started using Nutritics after receiving a recommendation email by the Sport and Exercise Nutrition Register (SENr).

“I had a look for other software and free online databases but haven’t seen anything like Nutritics and the possibilities it provides in order to do your job with such ease and accuracy. It has a massive ingredient list and food database that helps me complete the volume of my work in the best possible way.”

The main reasons why she chose Nutritics were:

1. Large food database
   Anna-Maria needed a massive food database to rely on due to the variety of recipes.
2. Accuracy of recipe calculation with smart portions & weight change factor
   She liked the accuracy of the weight change factor and the fact that it provides grams for vegetables, fruits, meat and fish. Since a lot of the recipes didn’t have accurate measurements for some of the ingredients, e.g. meat or fish recipes, she needed smart portions to work with.
3. Efficiency, accuracy & time saver
   When she first joined the team (June 2017), Anna-Maria had to calculate 470 recipes within a month and 1,700 recipes within four months. In order to analyse all the recipes that had been created since 2014, she needed a software that was easy to use and help her achieve her goal as fast as possible and as accurate as possible.

When she initially started working, she didn’t add the dietary specifications on the website, as this was added on the website at a later stage. The decision to add this later to the recipes on the website turned out to be quite challenging.

Moreover, the chefs used limitless ways of cooking and it wasn’t possible to measure the food before and after cooking — especially when keeping the high workload in mind. Anna-Maria used the cooking methods and weight change factor from the Nutritics database and was able to calculate and re-calculate lots of recipes in no time.

“I love the possibility and the opportunity that Nutritics gives to complete the work quickly in the most accurate way. I have gone through all 5,000 recipes at least twice to check if I have made a mistake.

“The food database is constantly increasing. I can see that Nutritics updates and checks it on a regular basis which I am very glad about.” If she can’t find an ingredient, she simply uses the option to add her own ingredients, always trying to calculate her recipes as accurately as possible.

“Most websites similar to ours don’t have calorie information or just very little, mainly for healthier recipes. I believe that all the free information we provide educates people, makes them understand what a recipe or food contains in order to help them make more informed eating choices.

“I am very happy with the software. Every time I needed help, or I had to ask a question or request a specific food, the team was there to help. I feel like I always have a backup, and that I work with highly proficient people!

“Personally, I would like to attend the Advanced Recipe Calculation Course to further improve my knowledge about nutrition information calculation. I would like to keep educating myself and help people eat healthy and follow a balanced lifestyle.”

As a company, they would like to work with schools in the future, provide children of all ages and students with nutrition and exercise materials that show and educate them on how to follow a healthy lifestyle and have better vitality.