WHITEWARE NUTRTION ANALYST This is version 0.088 of the Nutrition Analyst. Please send comments and suggestions to the author at: James White 8544 Bryan St. Louis, MO 63117 Registered users may call for assistance: (314) 726-1584. Register by printing REGISTER.DOC. Fill it out and send with a check or money order for $24.95 (Missouri residents send $26.73 including 6.725% sales tax). Registered users will receive the next edition of the food libraries at no additional charge. This program has two main parts. The "Test diet" section lets you select particular foods, one at a time, and keeps a running total of total nutrients (calories, protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins and minerals). The "Build program diet" part generates a total daily diet, within the limitations you give it, either from scratch or from a partial diet created with the "Test diet" section. Numerous utility routines help analyze individual foods, adjust your nutritional requirements, and create a food database of your own from an extensive library of food items. The sections interrelate. After choosing foods in "Test diet" for a while, selecting foods you desire (or perhaps your actual meals so far for the day), you can return to the main menu, select "Build program diet", and run that routine with the "Test diet" foods assumed as the basis for the analysis. When "Build program diet" has finished, you can return to "Test diet" with the programmed diet intact, for further optimization. While you are in "Test diet", you can go to "maximize nutrients" to hand-pick a food to, say, satisfy a particular lack. *** More detailed explanations. *** INITIALIZATION The program begins with creation of your personal dietary needs file. When you first start this program, you will be asked for your name. (You should enter it exactly the same each time you begin the program.) When you enter your name, the program looks for your personal dietary requirements file. If your file does not exist, the program will ask you various questions that are significant in determining your daily nutritional needs. Then the program will create a data file with your estimated dietary needs. Some notes on this process: first, proper nutrition is not an exact science. Some people utilize the available nutrients in their food more efficiently than others, and personal idiosyncrasies simply cannot be taken into consideration in this kind of program. The underlying theories of this program are from the mainstream of nutritional thought. As will be explained later in this text, I have tried to disregard all of the fad diet concepts and base this program only on generally accepted nutritional principles. Basic to the operation of the program is the concept of Required Daily Allowances (RDAs). These are based on standard nutritional requirements. MAIN MENU Here and elsewhere in the program, you may select an option by pressing the first letter of the desired choice OR by up/down arrow keys and . TEST DIET The food database that is loaded when you first enter the program contains some 130+ commonly available foods. These are sorted alphabetically on three screens. Press to change screens, and select a particular diet item by typing the number of the food. You may select any of these (or you may exit this segment of the program by entering 0). Before specifying a serving size, may be pressed to show you an analysis screen, relating the detailed composition of the food to your RDA. After selecting a serving size, the next screen presents a table with a cumulative analysis of the foods selected so far. The bottom line of this screen (and elsewhere in this part of the program) is another menu, selectable (as usual) by initial letter or by left/right arrow keys. The choices let you go back to the food displays to add more food, or choose a graphic display of the cumulative nutrition of the selected diet, or go to the "maximize nutrients" routine, or review the diet selected so far, or Exit to the Main Menu. (If you go back to the main menu, you can then go to Build program diet with your selected diet intact, if you want.) In "adding" a food, you may enter a negative number to reduce the servings of that food. If you subtract more of that food than you had previously chosen, it will be reduced to zero. To enter a fraction of a serving, you may use a decimal or a fraction. BUILD PROGRAM DIET This routine is very calculation-intensive and runs for quite a while once it starts. At the beginning of the routine, you are asked to make several choices. First, if you have selected foods in the Test Diet section, you are asked whether you wish to keep your test diet. Then, you are asked whether you want to set individual limits on foods. If you enter "y", then you will go through each food in the data base, one at a time, to indicate how much of that food item is acceptable. If you say no, you must still set a general limit, say 3 servings, applicable across the board to all foods. (You can also set a non-limit like 99 servings, but--trust me--nobody could eat that much celery and mushrooms.) Finally, you will be asked to set a sodium rule for the program. "No limit" will disregard sodium in calculating a program diet. "Normal limit" will cause the program to try to stay under your sodium RDA. "Restricted" will cause the program to reduce sodium substantially. UTILITIES The rest of the program segments are designed to make the main program segments described above as useful as possible. Change RDA allows you to adjust your individual requirements. Edit food library allows you to delete or add foods from any of the food libraries. Change person allows you to substitute a different person's daily requirements. (Previously selected menus will be retained when you return to Test diet or Build Program diet, allowing you to plan meals for the entire family.) Replace library allows you to substitute a previously created personal food data base. *** Philosophy *** That's all on how to operate the program. This section outlines the diet theories and rules that underlie the program. One of the questions you answer to create your personal nutritional needs file is your desirable weight. (Frequently used weight-height tables are available for reference at this point in the program.) You were then asked to rank your daily activity level. These two questions are used to determine your calory needs. (In surveys, most people believe that their reaction to food is unusual--most commonly, that they'll gain weight on less food than other people. Most people are wrong. Unless your doctor has actually diagnosed a thyroid malfunction [which almost always causes symptoms in addition to weight problems], you should assume that your reaction to food is within normal limits.) The definition of your activity level is obviously more subjective, but hopefully you'll be honest with yourself. A typical office worker (largely sedentary, phone and light typing) is activity level 1. A housewife with at least one child and no domestic help is about a 2. Give yourself a 3 if your job requires effort equivalent to constant walking. Ditch diggers and lumberjacks get 4s and 5s. Your exercise program, no matter how energetic, should not be allowed more than 1/2 addition to your score. The energy level calculated by the program is designed to maintain your desirable weight, based on your sex, age, activity level, and the few other factors requested. This is the place to stress that nutritionists unanimously believe that weight gain or loss is determined by calories (energy input) and activity (energy output) and by nothing else. It doesn't matter what time of day you consume the calories, it doesn't matter whether the calories are mostly carbohydrates or mostly fats or mostly protein. While this balance may affect your health otherwise, for weight loss (or gain) purposes, calories are calories. The most common rule of thumb is that one pound equals 3500 calories--that is, that consumption of calories exceeding energy usage by 3500 calories will translate to one pound gained, and vice versa. The orientation of this program is to encourage you to choose a diet that provides the number of calories you need while suppplying your other daily needs. Unless your doctor puts you on a crash diet for medical reasons, you'll be better off eating a properly balanced maintenance diet. If you eat only the calories necessary to maintain your desirable weight, you will eventually reach that weight. At the same time, you will have established a healthy pattern of eating that will last you a lifetime. Your protein requirement is determined by your age and sex (and, if you are female, your pregnancy and nursing status. Pregnancy and lactation affect dietary needs dramatically, and are included throughout this program). No distinction is made between complete and incomplete protein, since careful combination of the incomplete protein usually found in plants will result in complete protein. For further information, see Diet for a Small Planet, by Frances Moore Lapp‚. Carbohydrates are adjusted in this program. Food values are modified from the values usually given to more closely estimate complex carbohydrates and natural sugars. This program then requires, as recommended in most modern texts, that a normal diet contain a minimum of 48% complex carbohydrates and natural sugars (by calories). No more than 30% of the calories in your diet should be fats, and as little as possible of that should be saturated fats. Fat is treated as a limitation on your diet, and is presented for reference in that manner. Saturated fat and Cholesterol are similarly displayed. There continues to be intense controversy about whether consumption of cholesterol has any effect on cholesterol level in your body. You don't need to eat any, since the human body manufactures more than you need. In the absence of contrary medical advice, you may as well follow the current recommendation of the National Institutes of Health and limit cholesterol intake to 250 to 300 mg a day. The latter figure is the one used in this program. I said above that this program avoids fads, but dietary fiber really is important for a properly designed diet. There is little consensus of an appropriate level, so this program adopts a minimal requirement which is still substantially greater than typical American consumption. The vitamin requirements used in this program are those currently set forth as Recommended Dietary Allowances published by the Food and Nutrition Board, National Academy of Sciences--National Research Council. You should always remember that RDAs are intentionally set high, in an effort to provide adequate nutrition to a diverse population. Most people receive adequate nutrition at a level of 70% or so of the published RDAs. Some minerals are not included in the published RDAs, but are given instead as ranges of "Estimated Safe and Adequate Daily Dietary Intakes." Of these, only potassium has been included in this program, on the reasoning that deficiencies of other minerals are unlikely in a diet which is otherwise adequate. *** Acknowledgments *** Many sources were used to develop the bases and data for this program. Indispensable are the food analyses by the Department of Agriculture, published in multiple volumes as Handbook 8. Of great assistance was Jean Carper's Total Nutrition Guide (Bantam Books, 1987), which includes a great deal of unpublished food analysis from the Department of Agriculture's computerized database. Other works relied on heavily are: Dorothy A. Wenck et al., Nutrition (second ed., Reston Publishing, 1983); Jean A. T. Pennington & Helen Nichols Church, Food Values of Portions Commonly Used (14th ed. of Bowes and Church, Harper & Row, 1985); Ann M. Holmes, Nutrition & Vitamins (published as a volume of the Time Medical Reference Library, 1983); Richard Ashley et al., Dictionary of Nutrition (Pocket Books, 1975).