Brief Reviews of Five Nutrition Search Engines
If you made any New Years resolutions, chances are one of them concerned improving your diet. Perhaps you want to reduce calories, consume less fat or increase the amount of fiber you eat. While the Internet can't give you more will power, it can provide you with lots of information about food, nutrition and health.
And an excellent way to find this information is to search USDA Nutrient Database for Standard Reference , Food Finder, MayoClinic.com: Food and Nutrition Center, International Food Information Council and Meals For You.
USDA NUTRIENT DATABASE FOR STANDARD REFERENCE - NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION FOR SPECIFIC FOODS
A good first step in devising a healthier food plan might be to evaluate your current diet. Information at USDA Nutrient Database for Standard Reference can help you do this. It's a searchable collection of nutritional data on thousands of foods, including packaged foods and fast foods. Information on most of the items is quite extensive, and includes not only calories, fat, protein, etc, but also vitamins, minerals, lipids, and amino acids.
Results: A search for a particular food will display an alphabetical list of the foods or prepared dishes that match your search word or words. After you select an item, you're given a choice of various amounts (e.g. 100 grams. one slice, one sandwich, etc.) that nutritional data is available on. Nutrient results are given in chart form.
FOOD FINDER - WHAT'S IN THE FAST FOODS YOU EAT
Whether you're a fast food addict or just an occasional sinner, Food Finder can be very helpful. Here you can search for nutritional information about dishes served at 19 fast food restaurants (e.g., McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Arby's Taco Bell, etc.). The information was derived from the book Fast Food Facts, which was published by the Minnesota Attorney General's Office.
Search Tips: Searches can be limited by maximum calories, fat, percentage of calories from fat, cholesterol and sodium. You can search for a particular food at all restaurants or get a complete list of the items (plus the nutrients they contain) served at an individual restaurant.
Results: Results are given in the form of a chart which displays the amounts of calories, protein, fat, sodium, cholesterol, fiber, calories from fat, sugars and carbohydrates in each item.
MayoClinic.com: Food and Nutrition Center - HELPFUL INFORMATION ON MANY ASPECTS OF NUTRITION
MayoClinic.com: Food and Nutrition Center contains useful, clearly written articles on both the basics of nutrition and on specific nutritional issues. In addition it contains recipes (which include nutritional analyses) for all types of dishes.
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