Thankfully, there are numerous websites available for free to help you decipher what is best for you to eat. Each has its own pros and cons, and can be used as a standalone option or in conjunction with a pre-designed diet to help you track your progress. Since I've been focusing on weight loss, I decided to take another look at each site. What I discovered is that I have existing profiles with many of them, but haven't stuck to using any of them for an extended period of time. Hopefully the following will help you to do a better job of staying committed than I have!
NutritionData.com:
This site is my newest discovery, which I found while searching in Google for the nutritional information of a particular food. What I found, I immediately liked. ND allows you to see a visual "map" of each food's Fullness Factor (a higher rating means you may not reach for the Cheetoes right away), Caloric Ratio (what is the breakdown of carbs, fat and protein?), a rating of how well it well help with your goals of weight loss, optimum health and weight gain. For instance, cheddar cheese only scored 1.5 stars out of 5 for weight loss, is 72% fat on the Caloric Ratio, and gets a 2.2 out of 5 for fullness. It also puts into plain English the Good-- cheese is high in protein and phosphorus, as well as the Bad--cheese is very high in saturated fat. For those concerned with Glycemic Index, it gives a daily total as well as a per-food rating.
Overall, ND gives the most comprehensive, easy to access food ratings. I was immediately attracted to the colorful graphs, but when I signed up to create a profile the disappointment set in.
The best feature of this site may be the option to see which foods would be better choices for your particular goal. For instance, if you want to gain weight, and you just ate a cucumber, you can click on "Weight Gain" next to the selected food, and about 999 better food choices to gain weight will present themselves in alphabetical order, sortable by category.
However, ND does not allow you to "Track" your daily progress like a traditional nutritional website does. Each day, you add the foods and amounts that you eat, but at the start of each new day, you have to delete the previous day's evaluation and start new. If you want to compare over a week, you'll have to keep track on your own by posting your information into a spreadsheet or other personal tracking device, which in my opinion makes enough work to render the site useless.
If you're looking for quick accessible information on a particular food, ND is wonderful. But until they add an actual tracking option, I'll be moving on.
FitDay.com
Fit Day has been around for several years, and has a very streamlined approach to tracking calories. The site has basic colors, tabbing at the top and none of the graphs to breakdown nutritional food values of ND. Entering in custom foods is simple, and FD seems to do a better job of matching your search with the correct food than ND. In addition, it has options to track your weight, fitness activities, goals, moods, body shape and even journal about your weight loss. If you take the time to enter these, you will have the option of graphing your progress, or even seeing a pie chart of your mood breakdown.
There are some text ads at the top of some pages which tend to blend very well with the layout and style of the page, so they can get in the way. However, FD does offer a PC version for a price, which will eliminate the ads, so you can always upgrade.
For the serious fitness guru who doesn't want a lot of fluff, FitDay will do everything you need it to.
TheDailyPlate.com
If you want the gold version of fitness trackers, this is for you. As part of the Livestrong.com sites, TDP allows you to do more than I have the room or patience to type about. What I love about the site is that if you're obsessed with weight loss like I am, there is no end to the articles you can read, the inspirational "dares" you can take or the recipes you can try. There's a symptom checker much like WebMD, only if you have, for instance, asthma, you can add it to your profile for easy access to articles concerning your condition. If you have diabetes, there is a special food tracker which will also help you make healthy decisions for your unique needs. For those of us who love rewards, the site gives you "Badges" when you've reached a new goal or even just posted your daily food intake 5 days in a row. It appeals to a younger crowd and the group dependent by offering social networking capabilities and the option to track your friends' (or a total stranger's) progress. Of course, if you want to keep your profile private, you can do so with the click of a button.
My only gripe with the site would be that there is *too* much to do. That may seem strange, but Tony called me out on my obsession with my weight today (again), and the site is enabling me. If I want to read articles about weight loss all day, it is quite possible that I would never get any work done at all.
Happy tracking!
