by Geof Newton
[The Article - Part I] [The Article - Part II]
| Program | Platform | Price (USD) | Unique Food Items | Eval Available | Rating |
| Balance Log 2.1 |
|
$59 | 4300 | No | xx |
Logs intake vs. expenditure, tracks basic nutrients and allows you to set a calorie budget. No evaluation is available but the site shows a simple presentation and clear reports. One of the few programs which tracks water consumption.
| Calorie Companion |
|
$19.95 | 600 | Yes | x |
A simple calorie counter which doesn't do any nutritional analysis and limited calorie budgeting based on average daily caloric expenditure.
| Calories Count | N/A | $45/yr | 1000's | No | xx |
An on-line food and fitness log with tips, meal planner, calculators and full community. One of their biggest wins? No annoying ads.
| CrossTrainer 5.0 |
|
$79.95 (family edition) | 10000 | Yes | xxxxx˝ |
A sophisticated program but data entry could be made a little easier. Nice calendar view allows you to schedule workouts and build menu plans. Features a shopping list with costing, a full activity database, breakdown of all essential vitamins, minerals, and nutrients, an export utility, and workout psychology. One of the few packages offering logging of strength training in addition to aerobic exercise. The graphing function is limited to plotting 2 datasets at a time and it doesn't allow you to track daily resting heart rate. Integrated with company's website which features an active user community and a recipe and workout exchange area.
| Cybernetic Dietician 3.06 |
 |
$15.95 | 2400 | Yes | x |
Basic nutrient analysis and calorie counter. Doesn't track exercise, save historical data, or graph. Use for daily snapshot analysis only.
| Dave Johnson Nutrition |
|
$24.95 | ? | Yes | x |
Tracks 27 basic nutrients and and evaluates your meals against USRDA and the food pyramid. No modules for exercise tracking. This is a Microsoft Access database with an application interface built over it. Reports are provided in text only with no graphing.
| Diet Cruncher 1.6.0 |
|
$75 | ? | Yes | x |
Meal tracker and diet analysis package which uses USDA or New Zealand FOODfiles data. Really just a glorified spreadsheet with lookup capabilities. Requires that you download the food databases and import them manually.
| Diet Master 6.0 |
|
$24.95 | 13000 | Yes | xxx |
Analyzes nutrition and body composition and includes an exercise tracking module. More designed to build a meal plan based on snapshot nutritional analysis, it can also function as a diary. The program allows you to select from multiple goal schedules, for example "lose weight without burning muscle," and build meal plans based on your goal weight, calorie expenditure and intake. The company provides 2 basic meal plan templates and charges $19.95 for additional meal plans.
| Diet Power 3.3 |
|
$49.99 | 11000 | Yes | xxxx |
This is a decent nutrient analysis, food diary and exercise log with a nice presentation and easy to use interface. Based on R12 of the USDA database, you may find its food list to be a little out of date. Of special note, it allows you to sort different foods by value of a certain nutrient providing you with an easy mechanism to boost your daily intake of that nutrient. It can be a little sluggish on some database operations and in looking up and retrieving foods or exercises. You cannot put in weight, meal or exercise data for days prior to when you first start the program so its impossible to enter past historical data should you be inclined to do so. It also doesn't discriminate between the various meals but lumps all food entries together for a single day. Nevertheless, its a good, solid contender.
| Diet Sleuth 4.1 |
|
$34.99 | 5000 | Yes | x |
Another rudimentary meal tracker and diet analysis program without exercise. They are also the makers of Health Tracker, a companion program which will allow you to monitor and graph any medical measurement. For real fun, they also manufacture radiation detectors and provide software for amateur radio.
| Diet Tracker 1.1 |
|
$20 (shareware) | 1000 | Yes | x |
Tracks weight and caloric intake. No exercise, nutrient, vitamin or mineral data. A good option for those looking for something cheap and want to lose (or gain) weight by simple calorie counting only.
| Diet Watch | N/A | $100/yr | ? | No | xx |
Another on-line diet tracker with meal planner, shopping list generator, community, workout planner, and professional device. The food database is powered by ESHA (see below). Includes a nice graphical progress meter on your personalized homepage and instant feedback on whether your menu is meeting your diet goals.
| Dine Healthy 4.1 |
|
$129 | 10000 | Yes | xx |
A simple food and nutrient tracking system which includes an exercise database. Instead of keeping a running score of calories and nutrients as you enter data, you must enter all the data and then select Analyze. The program features a unique scoring system based on whether you exceeded or beat your target calorie goal and breaks down proteins and fats into animal or plant source.
| Do It! 3.0 |
|
$65 | 7500 | Yes | xxx |
Full support for WeightWatchers® Points, Atkins, and Zone diets, among others. Based on SR-15, we'd like to see a more comprehensive database of food items but food lookup is quick and entry is easy. The interface provides immediate CPF feedback and a calorie meter which make it simple to see the totals for the day and to determine whether you're gaining weight (red) or losing weight (green). You can also see what the effect will be on your day's calorie and nutrient needs by making substitutions here and there and watching how the totals are affected. It can be difficult to change the portion size after adding a food item to a meal but this program is ideal for those looking to shed or gain a few pounds.
| Eat Well - Be Well |
|
$87.95 | 6200 | Yes |
We couldn't rate this one because the website is atrocious and broken. It says all the right things but I'm not signing up to this guy's mailing list.
| EatWize | N/A | $49/6 months | ? | No | xx |
A full weight loss program comparable to WeightWatchers et al which includes special foods, documents, cd's, and an on-line community. The recommended target CPF ratios are similar to the Zone diet.
| eDiets | N/A | $50/yr | ? | No | xx |
An interesting collection of all the latest 'pop' diets, some old standards, and those special medical diets that everyone's so fond of. Membership includes access to a recipe club, full meal plans for your chosen diet, on-line information and mentoring, customized workout plans, and a complete diet needs analysis.
| ESHA's Food Processor |
|
$599 | 21875 | No | xx |
A professional grade diet tracking, profiling, nutrient analysis package with full amino acid breakdown and calorie intake vs. expenditure. Features a complete database of food products but the functionality doesn't quite seem to match the list price. This program also works much better as a snapshot analyzer rather than as an historical profiler and log.
| Fit Day | N/A | free | ? | N/A | xxx |
An on-line subscription based service which can track meal and exercise information for one month. The standard laws of posting your personal data on-line apply - it can be much slower than using a program on your own system, your personal data and eating habits can potentially be exposed to the general public, and the service is free to send you whatever advertising it cares to. A few months ago, the service was only available at $20/month but is now provided for free and subsidized by advertisers' dollars. The food, exercise, and nutrient databases are complete and the interface is intuitive and easy to navigate. For those with a good, fast broadband connection who like the motivation provided by a community of users and don't mind a little extra advertising, this is a good entry level program to move you toward your goals.
| Food and Exercise Diary for Windows 3.0 |
|
$39.97 | 10000 | No | xxx |
A nice looking user interface with simple to use calendar based entry and a summary of all important daily values directly on the calendar. This is really designed to be an historical tracking tool for diet and fitness information and also does a handy job at analyzing 82 nutrients, vitamins and minerals. The website could use some work and the "cable tv" feel ("Order within the next 60 minutes and we'll also include ....") might scare some off but we'd like to take this one out for a test drive.
| Food Smart |
|
$49.94 (home) $99.95 (fitness) |
5000 | Yes | xxxx |
Although still rooted in the older SR-14 and CNF2001 food databases, this is a program to watch. They use cutting edge technologies like Seagate Crystal Reports, Microsoft SQL Server, and XML to drive the product. If you happen to have Crystal Reports lying around, you can customize the queries and reports anyway you want. Free on-line updates are available to registered users via t toolbar option. A popup nutrition monitor provides instant feedback on all critical nutrients and a multiple window paradigm allow you to have multiple settings, people, graphs or reports open at the same time. Food entry is quick and easy with a thorough nutrient analysis but the program is designed more for snapshot analysis than long term logging. Its use of high-end tech can be a drain on older computer systems so we wouldn't recommend running it on anything slower than a 1Ghz PentiumIII. The company also provides an on-line version accessible via your browser.
| French Diet 1.02 |
|
$30 (shareware) | 6200 | Yes | xx |
A full featured diet analyzer sporting a unique interface with full color graphics. Once you learn how to find your way around in it, you'll find it has most of the tools you need for logging and analyzing your diet. One of the only programs to provide a model based on the Mediterranean Diet. Food lookup can be slow.
| Fuel 2.3b |
|
$149.95 | 5000 | Yes | xxxxx |
A great coach's or athletic nutritionist's tool, Fuel analyzes current diet and workout patterns and allows you to isolate deficiencies in your fueling methodology. It isn't designed to track weight or nutrition over the long term. The program features a sophisticated menu planner which bases its calorie and food choices on your preferences and workout schedule. The planner provides suggested menu plans for before, day of, and recovery after key events. The food data is slightly out of date since it relies on the 1997 Canadian food database but new menu items can easily be added as required (Professional Version only). The program crashed while we were performing timing tests and corrupted its database but the instability may be related to restrictions imposed in the evaluation version.
| Heart Smart |
|
$19.95 (shareware) | 2000 | Yes | xx |
This is a good basic intake calculator which provides a breakdown of calories, CPF, and a few critical nutrients. While the program doesn't track your caloric intake or expenditure over time, it allows you to plan a week of meals based on your scheduled activities and calorie goals. The meal entry doesn't allow you to delete just one item if you make a mistake; the entire meal must be cleared and restarted.
| Kathleen's Diet Planner 10 |
|
$75 | 25407 | Yes | xxxxx |
One of our top picks, this package comes with a nice looking and uncluttered interface, very comprehensive reporting with breakdowns of all major nutrients, acids, vitamins and minerals, and a complete database of SR-15 and CF2001 food data. Meal entry is done through a spreadsheet format making it a simple matter to adjust food quantity and clearly showing the nutrient breakdown of each item. CPF totals for the food item, the meal and for the day are calculated and displayed while entering data. The charting function is somewhat limited by its inability to graph more than 3 nutrients at a time and it can suffer from slow performance while looking up items. Its largest fault lies in the database. The company hasn't taken the time to adjust its database to "real-life" units, or servings. Instead, each item is left in the default SR-15 format of 100g forcing you do to some calculations to determine how many grams are in each serving of your item. [See Vendor's Comments]
| KiloControl |
|
$51.95 | ? | No | x |
Working from the Canadian Food Guide, the program uses the equivalency method to guide your eating habits. Based on your food entries over a 7 day period, KiloControl analyzes your eating habits and then creates a custom menu based on your favorite foods and your target goals. The site is extremely thin on useful information and the order form doesn't use a secure connection to transmit your credit card information. We recommend staying away from this company until they get their on-line act together.
| Lifeform |
|
$39 | 13000 | Yes | xxxx |
One of our original top picks, this is a great entry level program for tracking nutrition basics and exercise with an almost perfect balance of customizability with ease of use. Food item lookup and entry is extremely easy and fast. The program doesn't track minerals or contain a menu planner module but it does provide the ability to track a virtually unlimited number of medical measurements and log your daily exercise. Graphing capability is limited to 4 metrics per graph but is fully customizable. Why isn't it still a top pick? It's a Windows 3.1 program which is no longer being actively maintained and support has been abandoned by the writer. Based on old SR data, it's in serious need of a user interface and database overhaul, some simple programming upgrades which the manufacturer appears to be reluctant to pursue but which would make this program a market leader. If you can deal with paying for unsupported software, old data, and a few bugs which will never be fixed, this is your perfect choice.
| Mealformation 4.0 |
|
$49 | ? | Yes | xxx |
A java based nutrient analysis, menu planner and shopping list generator. Doesn't have an exercise module but does a decent job as a basic meal analyzer.
| Nutrawatch | N/A | $14.95/year | ? | N/A | xx |
Another on-line calorie counter, food analyzer, and exercise log subject to the same limitations and warnings about on-line services (see FitDay review above). In addition to the $14.95 per year Plus service, they provide a free service with access to only the food diary and goal setting components. You're also limited to creating only 10 custom food items under the free subscription. The service provides a rudimentary interface but includes all the basics one is typically looking for. A free on-line food finder service, available without registration, is an added benefit. The site has established an affiliate relationship with DietPower (see above) which is counter-intuitive as they would appear to be direct competitors. There is no indication that the DietPower software and the Nutrawatch service will ever talk to each other but something could be happening behind the scenes.
| Nutribase IV |
|
$69.96 | 23636 | Yes - on request | xxxxxx |
Our Editor's Pick, Nutribase comes in a variety of flavors ranging from single-use consumer through high-end clinical department. While the interface varies from product to product, the underlying engine and databases remain the same. Some features that set this apart from the competitors: data for the vitamin supplements of 75 manufacturers is included in the food database; daily calorie goals and progress towards your goal weight are presented in the main window and visible at all times; a customizable quote of the day; printout of a daily food log that you can take with you and fill in while away from the computer; free 4 week meal plans available for a variety of daily calorie goals; fully customizable target CPF ratios; an extremely powerful graphing engine; and a quick and thorough meal analysis. But we do have a few complaints or requests for enhancements: exercise and food lookup can be sluggish due to the size of the database (Nutribase EZ includes an automatically populated Favorites tab which speeds lookup significantly); the program uses a multi-window configuration which runs out of screen real estate quickly, especially on lower resolution systems; there are no facilities provided to track health variables like cholesterol, resting heart rate, doctor's visits, etc.; and it sometimes raises dialog windows behind other windows. This is the best overall program we found and should fulfill 95% of the needs of those looking to seriously track their nutrition and exercise. Enhancements in the next release, due anytime now, include support for Palm devices and a full SR-16 database. [See Vendor's Comments]
| NutriGenie 7.5 |
|
$49 | 8000 | Yes | xxx |
NutriGenie has created a slew of nutritional and diet programs all based on their flagship product, Optimal Nutrition. Each is tweaked for a particular dietary need, such as low glycemic or high fiber diets, or a commercial diet program like the Zone or Atkins. The base program provides a great dashboard of key nutrients and goal CPF percentages but suffers from a difficult to use food selection tool and isn't very adept at tracking calorie expenditure.
| NutriStrategy |
|
$44.95 | 10000 | No | xxx |
Screenshots and on-line marketing material show off a good all around program with all the key components. The program also features a menu planner and fitness planner, the latter of which we'd like to see in more programs. Meal and nutrient analysis covers basic nutrients, vitamins and minerals only and the graphing and reporting appears limited.
| Nutritional ID |
|
$89 | ? | No | xx |
A menu planner with rudimentary calorie tracker and limited historical ability. Created by a former bodybuilding champion, the program is designed to create a customized menu based on your target goal weight and nutritional needs. Detailed nutritional analysis and historical tracking of intake and expenditure is not within its scope.
| Nutrition Wizard |
|
$29.95 | 7000 | Yes | xx |
A quick, simple nutrition analysis and logging program with a rudimentary exercise module. The analyzer can monitor up to 36 key nutrients but the report functionality is limited and there is no graphing component.
| NutriTraX 3.0.1 |
|
$20 (shareware) | 6000 | Yes | xx |
A simple diet tracker and calorie counter, NutriTraX provides for the tracking of 4 additional nutrients and other physical characteristics but doesn't include an exercise module. A good option for those who need to track daily medical information and diet and don't need the features for an athlete.
| Paraben's Diet Tracker 3.0.1 |
|
$19.95 (shareware) | 6000 | Yes | xx |
A trivial food tracker and menu planner with limited reporting and no graphs. This is a great package if you want cheap, no frills meal tracking and very basic menu analysis. The program only tracks CPF, sodium and cholestrol.
| Performance Diet 4.0 |
|
$29.95 | 10000 | Yes | xxx |
Designed to complement the HealthRunr paper log, this program uses a unique set of color-coded NutriCode bars to clearly indicate your quota and day's complement of various nutrients. Along with all the standard modules, it features a unique calorie balancer which takes exercise and food intake from the past 7 days into account, a full medical tracking module, and an on-line component consisting of e-books, audio books in MP3 format, and a community forum. The entry interfaces and the reporting and graphing modules could use a little bit of updating but this is a serious contender and is especially good for those who like the additional visualization of their nutritional habits.
| Protrack 2002 |
|
$29.95 | 5300 | No | xxx |
Designed more for strength and fitness training, Protrack is a solid offering with a nice user interface and all the features a strength or speed athlete needs. The on-line site provides 73 training templates and the program allows you to track miscellaneous physical and health measurements like weight, number of reps of a particular exercise, and circumference of a muscle group. Protrack is a little soft on the nutrition aspect and doesn't provide an evaluation.
| Santé |
|
$39.95 | 7000 | No | xx |
Created by Hopkins Technology, a generic internet publisher, Santé consists of a cookbook, meal, weight, and exercise tracking modules, and a basic nutritional analysis. It also includes a meal costing feature for creating shopping lists and budgeting food expenses. The program is based on older technologies such as the Borland database, is written in Delphi, and could use some updating but it might be a good entry level program for the cost conscious shopper.
| SportTRAC |
|
- | 2300 | No | N/A |
Another program which would have been one of our top picks had it still been available, this is FUEL (see review above) for the consumer. Nutrition is handled from an athlete's perspective, calculating anticipated calorie needs based on scheduled workouts. The program tracks all kinds of training activities and provides functionality for correlating workout and racing performance with external factors such as weather, sleep, or mood. The package was purchased by Road Runner Sports sometime in 2001 and rolled into their RunMaster line of products which have subsequently been removed from the market. If you happen to find a copy at a yard sale, grab it!
| Subliminal Diet Food Blaster |
|
$19.95 | N/A | No | Huh? |
Working to lose weight? Bah! Shoot falling junk food with your broccoli cannon while subliminal weight loss and dieting messages are flashed on the screen. Feel those pounds just melt off! I can't believe he actually charges money for this!
| Weight By Date 2.6 |
|
$39.95 | 6000 | Yes | xxx |
Features a unique calendar driven interface with spreadsheet style food and exercise entry. Tracks WeightWatchers Points, logs exercise and intake, and analyzes 25 basic nutrients but makes frequent use of BMI as goal.
| Weight Mania 1.3 |
|
$49.95 | 7000 | Yes | N/A |
Pending Evaluation ...
| Weight Watchers | N/A | $14.95/mo | 20000 | No | xxx |
A complete weight loss program which has many tiers of entry including local meetings, an on-line community and tools, special foods, etc. The on-line component is complete and has many of the same features as the free FitDay service plus the unique Weight Watchers Points meal analysis tool. If you've been on the Weight Watchers program before, this service will be a natural fit ... and it sports a clean, user-friendly interface and complete access to a huge archive of Weight Watchers recipes. If you've never used Weight Watchers, try FitDay for free first and see how it works for you, then consider stepping up to the next level.
| Wellness Wizard |
|
$31.95 | ? | No | xx |
A complete recipe builder, nutrient tracker and menu planner. Builds shopping lists broken down by aisle. Also includes a coupon manager and meal costing but does not include calorie tracking or exercise modules.
| Zone Balance |
|
$19.95 | ? | No | x |
Based on the 40-30-30 Zone diet, this program analyzes your current meals and balances your menus. A simple to use interface but doesn't track overall calorie expenditure, intake or exercise.
| Zone Runner | $14 | ? | x |
Another Zone diet menu planner. Somewhere between April and November 2003, this website went black and we can't find any signs of Zone Runner still being available.
Columns represent the opinions of the individuals and do not necessarily reflect the attitudes of the club.