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Biotech Software

Software Tools for Nutritional Tracking? 54

Posted by Cliff from the does-a-body-good dept.
Deagol asks: "After reading about it several times on Slashdot, I decided to start the Hacker's Diet this month. I've even lost 3lbs so far. I'm looking for software tools to make this thing easier. So far, I've been using Nut to track my calories and see what nutrients I need to balance. Though Nut has been invaluable, it lacks a clean recipe and menu interface (it has them, but it's light on features). I did the usual google/freshmeat/sourceforge search, but turned up very little. gnutrition looks promising, but it's 2 years unmaintained and uses an old version of the USDA database. My requirements are: that it use the current USDA database; have a flexible recipe and menu functions which tracks calories and nutrients; and finally that it runs under Linux (prefer OSS). Multiple-user support and easy of use would be nice, but not required."
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Software Tools for Nutritional Tracking? More

Software Tools for Nutritional Tracking?

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  • fitday? (Score:5, Informative)

    by sporty ( 27564 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @02:27PM (#5893385) Homepage
    http://www.fitday.com

    I kinda liked fitday when i was trying to gain weight. It's also free. You don't get to export/import data, but as a temporal solution, it works.

    As for tracking who you are, you can lie on most of the info. Worst of it possibly is, they'll track an anonymous person's diet. Is your intake that sacred? :)

    Btw, last time i checked was a year ago. YMMV.

    • Re:fitday? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by maunleon ( 172815 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @02:39PM (#5893515)
      I second this. I used fitday as well, but only enough so I can learn how to eat. I foudn the food tracking and the protein/carbo/fat breakdown good (I use a 40carb, 30fat, 30 protein diet)

      You will find that after using it for a month or two, you learn to pace yourself and eat corectly. Then, it becomes cumbersome.

      Also note: it doesn't seem to be well managed by the admins. People have said it's next to impossible to get them to reply to any questions or problems, and they don't really add new features. They seem to be in maintenance mode, and some parts of the web site could really use improvement (the custom foods section for example, is limited in length...)

  • Losing weight fast (Score:4, Informative)

    by coryboehne ( 244614 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @02:45PM (#5893566)
    I've pretty much created my own "Hackers Diet" plan, here's how it pretty much works, Keep in mind that I've went from 230-235lbs down to 170lbs in only eight months..

    So, how did I lose weight?? Subway... J/K!!

    Actually I've just learned how to eat right more than anything, instead of eating hamburgers and fries (or panda express) I usually eat salad, most often without dressing, but sometimes I'll splurge and throw in a little bit of ham, or some fat free dressing. Once in a while I'll even eat a veggie sub.

    Keep in mind that fat free != Calorie Free, and calories are what you need to avoid.. Most doctors will tell you to not go below 800-1200 calories per day, although I've been at under 500 for quite a while with no side effects..

    And instead of eating a huge amount of anything I'll just eat a small amount of something, I've found that after doing this for so long my stomach has shrank so that it only takes about ten bites of something and I'm stuffed..

    I've also cut down to eating no more than twice a day, in addition to that I fast at least one day a week. I've also started to excercise quite a bit (running, or swimming most often)..

    As an aside, I noticed that I can start to see a 6-pack showing up, really cool because I've never been able to say that before.. Funny thing is that right now I weight 10 lbs less that I did in eighth grade..

    It's pretty amazing how much better I feel too, I still smoke more than a pack a day, but for some reason I can run a few miles without getting really very winded at all (prob. partly because of the increased oxygen levels here).

    But beleve it or not I really don't even think about "what" I'm doing anymore, it's just become normal.

    So, if you can force yourself to do this, you too can lose an insane amount of weight in a short amount of time..

    However, IANADoctor, so do this at your own risk, and don't be stupid about it, if you start to feel bad, eat something, just try to stay away from high fat- high calorie foods.. I'm the type to be a bit extreme about things, so this has worked for me, but a more moderate version would probably be better for most people.

    • Re:Losing weight fast (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rubinson ( 207525 ) <rubinson @ e m a i l.arizona.edu> on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @03:11PM (#5893792) Homepage
      You say that you eat twice a day, less than 500 calories per day, and fast once a week? You weigh less than you did in 8th grade?

      Might I gently recommend that you visit your doctor just to make sure that you're not underweight? At least check out your body mass index (NHI BMI Calculator [nhlbisupport.com]). It sounds like you may be starving yourself or, worse, that you might be at risk for developing an eating disorder. You say that you tend toward extreme behavior so you really need to watch out for the latter, an eating disorder will just wreck your health.

      • I've carefully monitored my health through use of BMI (currently still 25 I'm 5'10.5" and large frame) and Body Fat Measurements, currently 10%..

        My ideal weight as you may have already figured out is about 160lbs, or 1-2% body fat.. The risk of developing an eating disorder is a non-issue for me, as most anorexic patients view food as evil, I simply view it as a package of calories that I must monitor in relationship to my weight..

        I also should have mentioned that a regular intake of daily vitamins is es
    • Wow! -- you must be pretty thin. I read somewhere that the CDC warns that anything below 1200 calories per dar for your averagw adult is dangerous. Of ourse, you may be a ten-year-old, so who knows. ;)

      Besides, my goal isn't a crash diet. I want something I can tolerate plus something I can maintain for the rest of my life. I occasionally fast (seems to clear the head) for a day once in a while, but I find it uncomfortable. Currently my daily intake is 1500 calories, and that's about as low as I can t

      • Heh, thanks, although I'm not quite thin enough yet, but I am getting very close..

        I'm shooting for the V figure, and I'm pretty close...

        You are correct about the caloric minimum recommended by the CDC, although like I said, I've been at 500 for quite a while now and I've had no side effects (Except of course the inevitable state of keytosis) but if you were to try this, should you start to feel bad, just eat!

        Food is not evil, it is your freind, but just like any freind too much of them will eventually t
      • CDC doing nutritional advice now, wow I guess we all change when we hit 30

    • Re:Losing weight fast (Score:3, Informative)

      by nlh ( 80031 )
      I've also cut down to eating no more than twice a day, in addition to that I fast at least one day a week. I've also started to excercise quite a bit (running, or swimming most often)..

      This is the one part of your "crash diet" that I'm going to strongly advise against, based on my own experience and the advise of others.

      If there's one "magic" thing I discovered over the past few years, it's that fasting is the absolute worst way to get in better shape. Yes, it's counter-intuitive, but in reality when yo
      • Although you are paritally correct, if you are an avid slashdot reader I think you will remember an artice from a short while ago talking about the effects of fasting on mice, simply put compared to a restriced diet, and un-restriced diet, the fasting every-other day then eating all they wanted mice actually lived longer, and were healtheir..
        • I'm afraid I didn't see the article (and a quick search didn't turn it up), but I have to say I'm deeply skeptical.

          I've never heard a good nutritionalist, fitness trainer, or doctor ever suggest that not-eating-then-gorging was good for you. Simply put, it's not natural -- we weren't designed to operate that way, and there are TONS of people who are in perfect shape, who have lost lots of weight, and who are very healthy who don't follow that type of eating schedule.

          Now, that all being said, I have to ad
          • Heh, much ehh?? Well, to be fair I may have been wrong about the article being on /., you may want to check the evil MSN site..

            Interestingly enough though, the reason cited in their study as to a possible reason for the benefit was due to the fact that it's actually very natural to fast.. Our bodies were designed to handle the lack of food, and as a matter of a fact, we as a species have only very recently (in terms of our species history or course)started having enough food (or more importantly a steady
            • Interesting point on the naturalness of fasting....you do make a good point.

              'Ol Google News turned up the story you were mentioning:

              http://edition.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/conditions/0 4 /2 9/fasting.ap/
              http://www.ajc.com/health/content/h ealth/special/f asting0502.html

              I should note that the CNN articles makes the following mention:

              The dieting mice consumed 40 percent less food than mice eating normally and lost nearly half their body weight (49 percent) in the experiment, while the fasting mice weighed only
      • I used to weigh 230 and I am now down to a much more muscular 200 (at 6'1") I think if I was as slim as I am now without the extra muscle it would be 180 or less.

        What did I do you might ask...

        I started running and lifting weights. I have always had a big appetite (about 3000 cal a day in the old days) and loved eating. I now eat 4000-5000 calories a day, I find the real secret was the marathon training. I lost some weight running no more than 3-5 miles 3-4 days a week, but the weight really started fa

  • Update the Database? (Score:3, Informative)

    by rubinson ( 207525 ) <rubinson @ e m a i l.arizona.edu> on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @02:46PM (#5893571) Homepage
    If you like gnutrition, why not just update the included USDA Nutrient database? I took a cursory look at the source and it appears that the included database (in the 'data' directory) is simply a dump of the USDA's text files (available here [usda.gov]). The developers even include a couple of shell script to convert the USDA files into the correct format for gnumeric (mostly it's just stripping illegal characters).

    • I thought of that. However, the USDA usually increases its number of nutrients ever few revs of the database. gnutrition uses v13 and the current is v15.

      Plus, I compilee it on RH9 and it bombed at some point when I ran it. The docs speak of RH 7.1 I think.

  • Another really good one (tho it's a few dollars a month) is the Men's Health online trackers.

    See: http://www.menshealth.com/weightloss2/index.shtml

    It is really geared for men (obviously) but it's more professional, especially if you have exercise in your routine.

    By the way, excellent magazine, IMO, and the web site also has a number of good articles on topics guys care about (sorry, no open source articles though :)

    See for example 31 reasons why I'm still fat [mhmillion.com]
    • As taboo as it may be for some guys I lost a lot of weight last year (approx 25 lbs) by using Weight Watchers. They're current Winning Points diet plan helps you learn how to size your meals. You can actually eat anything you want. I was even able to work in 50 cent Cheesburger day at McDonalds into my plan. :-D

      The nice thing about it now is that you can do it all on-line. It's cheaper, and you get all the materials, plus there is a palm app that also helps you keep track of things.

      The second thing I try

  • I really don't understand why you feel you need some piece of software to keep track of your nutritional information. I use pencil and paper and it works fine for me. There are countless websites that list the macronutrient and caloric data for a wide range of foods. Isn't that all you really need? Dieting and nutrition isn't complicated. The bookeeping should be simple. Why do you need a specially-designed piece of software?

    GMD

    • I really don't understand why you feel you need some piece of software to keep track of your nutritional information. I use pencil and paper and it works fine for me.

      'Cause I'm an anal s.o.b., that's why. ;) I could use pencil and paper for my personal finances, too, but I prefer to use gnucash.

      There are countless websites that list the macronutrient and caloric data for a wide range of foods. Isn't that all you really need?

      Nut can do that, and it excels at the raw nutrient data. My biggest gripe wi

  • He's a fireman and a Jared fan from Subway!
    He got real big on burgers and fries.
    Now he's down to a smaller size.
    He's Deagol, Clay Deagol
    He gets his might from his... um... OSS nutrition tracker... or something.

  • Watch out for the USDA Pyramid (Score:5, Informative)

    by Paul Burney ( 560340 ) * on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @02:56PM (#5893649) Homepage
    The diet you refer to doesn't offer many suggestions about which foods to eat (focusing mostly on total calories), but I urge you do avoid the USDA pyramid you may have learned about in school.

    The current USDA pyramid is flawed and promotes many unhealthy habits. Like much of the field of "nutrition", the pyramid isn't based on scientific facts, but rather conjecture and speculation.

    Some of the main flaws with the current pyramid are the recommended amounts of complex carbohydrates per day, the dubious inclusion of potato as a vegetable, and the absence of "good" fats from the pyramid.

    There was a very nice article with real scientific/medial data behind it [sciam.com] in Scientific American a few months ago. Take a look before heading into that new diet.

    There is also a nice picture of the proposed new pyramid [sciam.com]. For those using Lynx, the base contains whole grain foods and plant oils. The next tiers contain vegetables and fruit, with the emphasis on vegetables. The middle tiers consist of nuts, legumes, fish, poultry and eggs and dairy. At the top, under "use sparingly" are red meat and the hacker diet, white rice/white bread/potatoes/pasta and sweets.

    Good luck. I hope you can keep the pounds off.
    • The current USDA pyramid is flawed and promotes many unhealthy habits. Like much of the field of "nutrition", the pyramid isn't based on scientific facts, but rather conjecture and speculation.

      There are definitely problems with the food pyramid. Some of it is, as you note, because of conjecture and speculation in the field of nutrition. But some of the problems are also due to politics as the USDA needed to assuage various competing industries.

      NPR's Talk of the Nation had a fairly interesting discussio
    • Actually while its still a debate thier is plenty of evidence to show that rice and pasta don't spike the blood sugar level like white bread and potatoes and really are quite good for you.
    • Two things people should notice about that pyramid:

      Notice the huge spacing between whole wheat bread and white bread. Almost no white bread, and a lot of whole wheat bread. That is very important.

      Also notice that soda is not a food group.

      A few more hints:

      Cut down on anything that has High Fructose Corn Syrup in it. You really should remove it from your diet, since it does nasty things to your insulin.

      Watch the SIZE of your portions as much as what you eat.

      Remember you need fat, protein, and carbs! You
    • I think the problems with the food pyramid have less to do with "speculation" than with politics [usatoday.com].

  • "lbs" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jpkunst ( 612360 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @03:14PM (#5893819)

    I've even lost 3lbs so far

    Interesting. Not that I have any idea how much a lb is.

    Strange measurements systems aside, I found that the best way to lose excess weight is

    • Do not eat fat snacks (potato chips, etc.) and sweet stuff (candy) on a regular basis
    • Exercise regularly
    • For the rest, eat normally, i.e., don't torture yourself for a limited time with a special diet to "lose weight fast". The weight will come right back when you stop with the diet. You should change your eating habits permanently.

    I managed (a few years ago) to go from 85 kg to 77 kg and I'm now at about 78 kg: good enough, though I'd like to get back to 77 again.

    JP

  • I just used Excel. (Score:2, Informative)

    by cheezerman ( 316260 )
    I have been keeping track of my caloric intake for almost a year now.

    All I did was create a simple Excel chart that adds up the total calories, and use a new sheet every day, sorting through weeks in folders. You could easily expand that to include Nutrients.
    You could also use any open source equilivant of Excel.

    Where did I get the Nutrient information? There are several ways to get that:
    • Oops.
      Forgot the last part of my post.

      After a while you don't even need to look up the nutrition information for foods, you'll just know.

      Also, you will only lose weight if your caloric intake is less than what your body needs.

      That's IT!

      A good site for estimating how many calories your body needs is here [hussman.org].

    • Damn, I wish we'd had this thread at the end of last year. After a period of inactivity due to injury, I also wanted to keep track of things as I got back into shape. I set up an Excel spreadsheet back in January, tracking my daily food intake (including calories, amount of protein, carbs, fat and fibre, and how many portions of fruit and veg I was getting each day), my daily exercise (counting anything lasting more than a quarter hour or more as significant) and my daily weight. Would have been a whole lot

  • I haven't found a Linux/OSS solution for this niche yet, but I must admit I love Crosstrainer [crosstrainer.ca]. Its interface has a lot of annoying kinks in it, but it's got a huge food database, custom analyzation, fitness tracking and all that good stuff. If anyone else was intrigued by this question but is willing to use a proprietary Windows program, that is the one I would recommend.

    gnutrition [sourceforge.net] looks like it's the best of the OSS bunch but unfortunately I can't as of yet get it to compile, but then again it's on my b

    • I'd actually be interested in this food database you're working on. I can't use a lot of these programs, simply because I'm a type I diabetic, and none of these seem to be geared with that in mind. And why would they, right? =) But if you're creating a food database from scratch, this could be something I could use - if you're in the market to share. Feel free to reply here, or email me (it's in my profile).

  • Calorie Companion (Score:3, Informative)

    by vallee ( 2192 ) on Tuesday May 06, 2003 @04:04PM (#5894438)
    My partner has lost 40 lbs using this method with Calorie Companion [caloriecompanion.com]. Windows-only, VB app, but it lets you easily keep track of calorie intake, get reports, etc.

    Hope this helps,
    Paul
  • after browsing throught the solutions offered by slashdotters on this topic, I was just wondering if anyone knew whether the nutrition information for trademarked foods and beverages was copyrighted/protected in any way or not? (i.e. the fitday website seems very useful but you can't input "Coca-Cola"; rather you either have to choose "carbonated caffeinated soft drink" or enter the data yourself).

    It seems pretty obvious that a database entry stating that a can of Coke has X calories and Y carbohydrates,

  • My girlfriend said she really liked eatwatch [sourceforge.net], which is a palmos program written by the guy who did the hacker's diet. Is this what you've been using so far?

    There sure seem to be graphs of people's weight if you search for eat-watch in google.

    Here's a review [ciao.co.uk] that explains more details.

    I wonder if there are scales that can transmit your weight back to a computer?
  • Your body needs fat.

    You should get about 30% of your calories from fats, and since fats have 9 calories per gram, and carbs and proteins have only 4 your should get about 14% of your food by weight from fat.

    Fat free foods often make up for the lack of fats with sugar. (a tasty but generally worthless food). Can you say sugar crash? diabetes?

    Just get off the caffeine and sugar, and cut your calorie intake down to ~1500 per day, and exercise regularly.

    (Every 3500 calories equals one pound, so if your wei
    • 1500 calories per day may be a little low. I'm 6ft and 183 lbs, so I need more than that per day just for my body to operate properly.

      On days when I want to lose weight, if I cut it down to 1800 i'm fine. Usually I try to stay under 2000.

      However, I also work out 4x week and used to run ~8 miles per week before I strained my calf muscle.

      • I would be interested to point you to my post above entitled "losing weight fast".. You may very well do fine on 1500 a day, as I am usually below 500 and I weight in at 170 5'10" tall.. Of course if you want to lose weight you will have to eat less than you "need to operate properly.." otherwise you will simply maintain your weight.. If you really want to lose weight cut your calories, eat whatever you please, just cut the calories as much as you can stand too.
        • It appears you have never heard of something called a basal metabolic rate. That is how much your body is consuming daily, to maintain your weight, IF you were staying in bed the whole day.

          Yours would be around 1600-1700, I believe.

          If you eat 500 calories per day, you are either anorexic, or you don't know how to count.

          • Umm, read my post again, I am not trying to maintain my current weight... I'm trying to lose weight, successfully I might add.. I understand BMR quite well, I could show you some nice formulas to calculate it if you would like.. However, if you are not below what your body needs on a daily basis you will never lose weight.
      • I am 6'1" and a (mostly) muscular 200lbs. I eat 4000-5000 calories a day. I lift weights 3X a week for an hour, and I run 5-7 miles 3 times a week, AND (the important one from my experience) I run 13-20 miles once a week.
  • I have always thought it would be a good idea to have software that suggests nutritional recipes based on what the local supermarket has for sale in a particular week so that I can eat healthy and save money at the same time. Is there any way that you could "scrape" sale items from say Safeway's page and use this to determine a recipe?

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