Somebody wrote: > But... isn't the tool the least of your problems? The big one being, > where are you going to get your nutritional database. (Seems to me that > most of what Weight Watchers and Noom do is collect data on millions of > products.)
From my records in my free format database (which would not be suitable for your program (at least not in its present condition), some notes on available databases. From "USDA databases" Thu Sep 08 06:57:41 2016 Date: 09/08/16 06:57 am Subject: USDA databases There is documentation available to explain how the databases are organized, what they contain, etc. Several different formats are available (ASCII text, Access, etc.) Statistical information (e.g., standard deviation) is available for some data. * [[http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=8964][USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference: Release 28]] * [[http://www.ars.usda.gov/sp2UserFiles/Place/80400525/Data/SR/SR28/sr28_doc.pdf] [Composition of Foods: Raw, Processed, Prepared; USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, Release 28 (2015); Documentation and User Guide]] * [[https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/docs/SR_BrandedFoods_May2016.pdf][USDA Branded Food Products Database; Documentation; May 2016]]--an experimental public / private partnership, dissolved in 2015 (iirc) after developing data for 354 products, incorporated as an adjunct (iiuc) to the USDA database SR28 * [[https://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=24912][SR27 - Download Files]] And, from some documentation on CRON-O-Meter (which is a program like you're describing, available in an online version and a Linux version: <quote> The foods in our database come from several sources. * NCCDB (Nutrition Coordinating Center Food & Nutrient Database) from the University of Minnesota, contains over 16000 food entries with comprehensive data on 70 nutrients. * USDA (SR28) (United States Department of Agriculture National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference (SR28)) contains over 8000 food entries with data on over 70 nutrients. * ESHA (ESHA Research, Inc.) contains over 35000 brand name products and restaurant menu items. These items don't typically have as full of a nutrient profile as the USDA and NCCDB items, but contain all the published information from the product nutrition labels--I don't know how many nutrients--may vary. * ???? Nutritionix: barcode scanning database, contains data for over 400,000 food product nutrition labels--I don't know how many nutrients--may vary. Nutritionix API * CNF 2010 (Canadian Nutrient File) This data has a lot of overlap with the USDA data (many entries are derived it), but adds a lot of additional foods, as well as reflecting differences found in Canadian foods. It has french and english names for all items, as well as standard measures in metric units--I don't know how many nutrients--may vary. * IFCDB (Irish Food Composition Database) contains nearly 1000 irish food and supplement products--I don't know how many nutrients--may vary. * CRDB (CRON-O-Meter Community Database) foods submitted by CRON-O-Meter users (they show green in the food search dialog)--I don't know how many nutrients--may vary. * Custom These are your custom foods. These are private and can only be viewed and used by you, or any friends you have linked to for food-sharing--nutrients included may vary based on where I got the data (I mean, like from which of the databases listed below. </quote> One of my points is that data / databases are available. I'm also willing to share with you my file on my experiences with this type of program. NUT is available for LInux, but it was really freaky -- for example, you had to specify how many meals per day you intended to eat (for this example, assume 6, 3 meals, 3 between meal snacks, and then when you entered the first meal it multiplied all the nutritional values by 6. I forget what it did as you entered the other meals. CRON-O-Meter was much better, but not really good enough to suit me. I experimented with possibly as many as 10 such programs that I could run without touching Windows. One of them (I forget which) tracked something like 60 different nutrients, things like micrograms and such of minerals, vitamins, ... If you're really interested, I can make my file with my notes in it available to you. You can treat it as a plain text file, or read it as emails in any email client that can handle mbox files, or, with a special file I can provide, read it in kate with the features I intended it to have (syntax highlighting and folding).
