For many years, I used online sources to look up, calculate, and track my nutritional intake. Many of the websites claiming to give nutritional information are simply advertising ploys for some particular fad-diet. Conversely, some websites are very nutritionally accurate, but are impossible for the average person to navigate and understand. With all the diet and nutrition information out there, it can be hard to sort figure out which sites are good, and which are well, junk. Use this list to help guide you toward the more accurate, credible, and user-friendly websites for nutritional information.
1. www.eatright.org This is the official website of the American Dietetic Association (ADA). This is the most reliable and trusted source for nutritional information, both online and off. The American Dietetic Association is the Nation’s leading group of food and nutritional professionals.
The ADA website is good for sorting out fad diets and faulty information from solid, scientifically-proven fact. The American Dietetic Association website has a main category for food and nutritional information, which is quite thorough. Under this “Food and Nutritional Information” heading are countless sub-categories which will tell you more than you ever wanted to know about nutrition. This Food and Nutritional Information category is just one of the many informative sections included in the ADA’s website.
2. www.fitday.com For everyday use, this website is my favorite. Once you register, you can track your food intake using the food search engine to locate your consumed food. There is also an option to manually add a food if it is not included in the database.
Fitday is really great because it provides you will not only readout of calories, fat, protein, etc., but it actually creates a pie graph. As a visually-oriented person, this is great. The pie graphs are helpful if you are trying to eat a certain ratio of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins. On fitday.com, you can track your weight, food and exercise statistics, and other information over a period of time. This is an excellent tool in weight loss and other goal reaching.
3. www.caloriesperhour.com If your goal is to lose weight, this is a very useful source. On caloriesperhour.com, you can calculate precisely how many calories are in any of thousands of the foods listed. You can also determine exactly how many calories you burn doing a certain activity. These activities include obvious ones like running, biking, and such. Also included are such activities as reading, cooking, showering, sleeping, and sex.
4. www.calorieking.com This is probably the best website for fast food and other restaurant fare. Most of the major restaurant chains have their own website containing nutritional information, but calorieking.com is an easy, one-stop source for this type of data. This website also contains a vast database of other common foods. The search engine on calorieking.com is very user-friendly.
5. www.thecaloriecounter.com A fairly new website to me, thecaloriecounter.com is very informative. This website does something different in reporting nutritional data: it show the actual nutrition label. This is a fairly novel concept in online nutrition info. This nutrition label method can be good or bad, depending on the user. If you know how to read and interpret a standard U.S. nutrition label, it is great. However, if you are like most Americans who have no clue how to properly use a nutrition label, this tool is useless.
So there are my top 5 recommendations for online nutritional information. These are all sources that you can count on to provide accurate, detailed information. These sites are not associated with any particular diet plan, fad or otherwise. Use these tools wisely, and the information provided will help you become better-equipped to deal with the endless rumors and misinformation associated with nutrition and diet.
