Serious Nutrition TrackerTM
Helping you get serious about nutrition
Features
- Fast, user-friendly interface (introduced in v2.0 based on user feedback) *see Final Note*
- The only app that allows you to track the water content of food
- Create your own food labels
- Create combination items for recipes or meals
- Create custom food databases and share them with others (or edit them in spreadsheet programs)
- Detailed common foods database (Canada Nutrient File 2007b)
- You build your main database so you do not have to troll lists of food you do not eat
- Food search index and food group categorization
- Daily, weekly, and per item statistics
- Energy, protein, and fluid requirement estimator (or set your own energy goals)
- Nutrient information by weight, energy and ratio
- Statistics for user-defined time-spans
- Averages for user-defined time-spans
- Large, easy to read, bar graphs
- Graphs that track individual nutrients, energy and water
- Record your consumption throughout the day (not just for pre-defined meals) because when you eat is important
- Sort your consumption by nutrient to find where you are consuming the most sodium, trans fat, etc.
- Record exercise times (not exercises) and use the consumption graph to gauge pre/post exercise nutrition/hydration
- Tracks energy (kcal or kJ), total fat (g), saturated fat (g), trans fat (g), cholesterol (mg), sodium (mg), potassium (mg), total carbohydrate (g), dietary fibre (g), sugars (g), net carbohydrate (total carb - fibre) (g), protein (g), calcium (% or mg), iron (% or mg), and water (mL or fl oz)
- No network connection required (except when sharing your custom databases)
How serious are you?
Serious Nutrition Tracker is a simple but powerful tool designed to help you analyze your diet. It allows you to build a database of your own food, record what you eat, and receive graphical and statistical information about your diet. It also lets you help your friends and family with the ability to share custom-built food label databases.
This is a program born out of necessity rather than gimmick. I originally created it for personal use because I could not find an application that allowed me to make my own nutrition labels or gave me enough meaningful information about my diet. It replaces cumbersome notebooks, complicated spreadsheets, and tedious calculations with an easy and intuitive interface that you can carry in your pocket.
It is designed to make recording food easy, and also to give users an active role in scrutinizing their food. My hope is that people do not just record what they already eat, but look carefully at what they are eating and make positive changes.
This page discusses each of the four primary sections of Serious Nutrition Tracker: Food Book, Statistics, You, and Utilities.
Food Book
The Food Book is a database or menu containing the food that you eat. Since it is small and personal, it will be faster than any program that requires you to search through thousands of foods that you do not. You can add food to the Food Book by transcribing a nutrition label, combining existing Food Book items, or adding an existing item from another food database. Serious Nutrition Tracker contains two types of food databases: a common food database, and custom food databases. The common food database is a version of the Canada Nutrient File 2007b with baby-food removed. Custom food databases are those that you have downloaded (see Utilities for more information).
The Food Book is controlled by a toolbar at the top of the screen. This toolbar allows you to set the operation mode, filter viewable items, and add new items. Below the toolbar is a search bar that allows you to search for food within your Food Book. Below the search bar is a list of the food in your Food Book. At the right side of the list is an index so that you can quickly jump through the list by pressing a section title.
The Food Book operates in two modes: Eat and Manage.
In Eat mode, pressing a food item will bring you to a screen where you can record when and how much you ate.
In Manage mode, pressing a food item will bring you to a screen where you can view item properties, edit the item, delete the item, or add the item to a custom food database. Note that you can edit, but cannot delete, items that you have eaten within sixteen weeks. This is to ensure exact diet tracking within that time period.
Statistics
This is the reason Serious Nutrition Tracker was created: to provide concise, at-a-glance, nutrition statistics. There is more to nutrition than counting calories.
Statistics are available in graphical and chart form. The graphs quickly convey when and how much of each macronutrient, mineral and water you are consuming. The charts show a breakdown of your nutrient consumption by weight, energy (kcal and kJ), and energy ratio (ratio of energy consumed from each of the three macronutrients). The charts also give you the ability to select a time interval and receive information for consumption within that interval.
Statistics are divided into two sections: Daily and Weekly. Daily statistics allow you to access per-item information including percentage of total energy consumed, as well as percentage of estimated energy requirement (along with weight, energy, and energy ratio described above). Weekly statistics allow you to receive averages across user-defined time intervals.
The nutrients currently tracked by Serious Nutrition Tracker are: energy (kcal or kJ), total fat, saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, sodium, potassium, total carbohydrate, dietary fibre, sugars, protein, calcium, iron, and water (ml or oz).
You
Serious Nutrition Tracker is able to provide an estimate for your daily energy and water requirements. This estimate is based on the Dietary Reference Intakes Tables provided by Health Canada. If you already know your energy requirement, you can enter that instead, and Serious Nutrition Tracker will help you achieve your energy goals.
Final Note
Serious Nutrition Tracker is designed to be used over an extended period of time. It has a user-friendly interface (fast and sensible) as opposed to a beginner-friendly interface (obvious but slower). It takes time to build up your database and fully realize how fast and easy this app makes diet tracking. When you start, read the Help. If you have any questions, I am only an e-mail away. Enjoy!