Currently, if you want to replace an ingredient with an alternative you can add an alternative to that specific ingredient. Which is quite good for many reasons, but also creates quite a few problems:
Recalculation of nutritional information even with this can't be perfect, but recipe variation can have hardcoded amounts
User interface for alternatives overcomplicates the whole recipe-card design, while you can display variations in a bit more minimalistic way
Database schema will be a lot simpler without alternatives
Description
Currently, if you want to replace an ingredient with an alternative you can add an alternative to that specific ingredient. Which is quite good for many reasons, but also creates quite a few problems:
recipe-carddesign, while you can display variations in a bit more minimalistic way