Hope that helps!

You do not count the free food. This salad is made of mostly 0 PP-food, so you only have to count the points for the walnuts. If you make a vegetable soup with “free” vegetables and just a tablespoon of oil, it’s just the oil.

It’s funny, I started WW January 2005 and I have dealt with “free” food ever since.

My personal opinion about the salad “recipe” and PP values is that if it’s made up of a great deal of free foods and very little non-free (ie. some nuts being the only non-free), I’d just account for the nuts. If I was making a more ingredient-dense recipe where half the ingredients were free and half were a bit pointy (like a veggie-filled lasagna), I’d go for what the Recipe Builder says, accounting for the NI for everything, including the “free” items, because it doesn’t make a big difference in the overall calculation anyway. Because like you always say, people aren’t walking into to WW because they ate too many grapes. But too much cheesy pasta drenched in veggie-liscious marinara? Ehh, maybe.

orange = 0
grapefruit = 0
total points for recipe = 4

as I build it.

I get the “use your best judgement” aspect but I’d like to know what the official WW policy is. Are they supporting the “don’t add free fruit and veggies to recipe builder” technique? It doesn’t really matter, I’m going to eat it anyway but I know so many WW members will get frustrated and walk away because these new points aren’t as intuitive as the old.

When I am cooking, I simply leave out the “free food” in my calculations for points… but I do run them for the “fiber” content, because I strive for quite a bit of fiber per day… (natural kind, not the “add to icecream to lower the points kind)

I have increased my fruit and fresh vegis since doing the points plus – but, I the point totals still freak me out a bit. I have to get used to the adjusted numbers… but I think it will work out fine.