Measures

The concept of a measure in the food diary program is some “measurable” quantity of a food or recipe. Measures come in three types;

• weight measures
  gram, oz, fl oz, mg, or pound

  volume measures

  cup, tbsp, tsp, ml, or quart

  unit measures

  User defined. whole, large, slice, pat, serving, etc.

All foods must have at least one weight measure, and you can always convert to any of the other weight measures. A food can have multiple volume measures with the same unit (cup) as long as they have a different preparation (chopped vs. diced), because different preparations can cause the same volume to have different weights. A unit measure is something that is particular to that type of food, like a “slice” of cheese, or a “large” banana. While the program can convert from one unit of weight to another, and from one unit of volume to another (that has the same preparation), the program can’t convert from one “unit” measure to another.

A single food or recipe can have multiple measures. For the food “Onion” you could have the weight measure “gram”, the volume measure “cup, diced”, the volume measure “cup, chopped”, the unit measure “large” and the unit measure “small”. Since you can only create new measures using the measurement dialog from existing measures, the program will know how many grams are in each of these measures. This allows the program to calculate the nutrition information for each measure of a food.

Recipes

A recipe is a collection of ingredients with optional instructions about how to make the recipe. An ingredient is just an amount of a measure of a food. So if we had a food called "Onion" with a measure "cup, diced", a recipe could contain 2 "cup, diced Onion". When a measure is added to a recipe the nutrition information from the food is used to calculate the score of the recipe. If the nutrition information of the food changes after the food has been added to the recipe, the nutrition information of the recipe will still be updated. A recipe will always have a weight measure (just like a food), and a unit measure called "whole". The "whole" measure will be created to equal the weight of all the ingredients in the recipe. Once a recipe has been created, you can add new measures to it (just like a food) using the Add measure dialog.

Categories

The program sorts foods by category. The USDA has a list of categories which the program uses. These categories can’t be removed, but they can be renamed, and new categories can be added. If you add a new category, you can remove it again if it doesn't contain any foods

Built-in Categories

• Dairy and Egg Products
• Spices and Herbs
• Baby Foods
• Fats and Oils
• Poultry Products
• Soups, Sauces, and Gravies
• Sausages and Luncheon Meats
• Breakfast Cereals
• Fruits and Fruit Juices
• Pork Products
• Vegetables and Vegetable Products
• Nut and Seed Products
• Beef Products
• Beverages
• Finfish and Shellfish Products
• Legumes and Legume Products
• Lamb, Veal, and Game Products
• Baked Products
• Sweets
• Cereal Grains and Pasta
• Fast Foods
• Meals, Entrees, and Sidedishes
• Snacks

Nutrients

The USDA database contains over 100 nutrients (not all are measured for every food). All the standard nutrients are available including calories, protein, carbohydrates, different types of fat, sugars, fiber, most all vitamins, caffeine, and water.

When you create a new user, you can select any of the nutrients defined in the USDA database. For each food the program stores the amount of each nutrient in 100g of that food. 100g is an arbitrary amount chosen so that there aren’t rounding errors from too much or too little of the nutrient. When you display a food, or add a food to a recipe, you are really dealing with a measurement of that food. All measurements know how much they weigh. This weight is used to calculate the amount of the nutrient to display.

USDA Nutrients