Nutrition Planning and Tracking Program
Defining your Food Items

The Food Item dialog is used to define foods on your custom list. Each Food Item definition contains:

  • Category - categorize the food for easy selection. You can select an existing Category from the drop down list, or enter a new one directly.

  • Description - enter a unique (non-duplicate) description for the item.

  • Amount - the amount of food in a single portion.

  • Units - units of measure related to amount. You can pick from the drop list or enter a new one. For example, to make one cup constitute a portion of milk, you'd enter 1 for the Amount and cups for the Units.

  • Nutritional Values - enter the calories, fat, protein, etc. here. If you don't know a value, leave it zero or estimate it if appropriate.

  • The Food Composition panel shows detailed information about the nutritional values of the food, as well as the implied caloric content.
    Click on Implied Calories to automatically syncronize the calories in your food item to the implied value.

  • Make Compound Item - click this button to create a compound food item. See more information about compound items below.

    • Compound Items
    A compound item is used to represent things like meals and recipes. You will select the ingredients, specify a number of portions, and the nutritional values are all summed and divided by the portion count you specify. The result is a single food item that you can select as an eaten food.

    Lets use a batch of pancakes as an example. You would add the flour, eggs, milk, and butter to the compound list in the amounts you use to make a batch. You'd enter the number of pancakes you make from this batch in the Portions field. Eatometer will add up all the nutritional elements, divide them by the number of portions and save them as a food item.

    Note that the individual components of a compound item are not retained. You cannot change the components of a compound item once it is created, you can only change the result.

    Be sure to give your compound items a meaningful description!