Attention!
This project is discontinued. If you are looking for a nutrient calculator and analyzer software, you should try the Balanced Diet Nutrient Calculator, the new online version. If you are interested in a community seeking balanced diets, you should join the Balanced Diet Community. In case you want to have fun with dietary research, you may engage in the Balanced Diet Contest.
The last update of the source code of this project is available at GitHub/Nutrika. The source of the Android version is also available there at GitHub/Nutrikandro. Information about this activity appears at projectnutrika, and the news at Google+/Nutrika.
Summary
Nutrika is a simple desktop application to calculate nutrient content of various meals consumed during a given period, and compare it to an individual's recommended intake.
It lists nutrient and recommended intake values for 100g or 3.527oz of food items, meals consisting of different amount of food items, and a schedule of meals.
This is a free software distributed under GPL.
Introduction to Nutrition
Have you ever heard something like "product X is very healthy, because it contains a lot of Y" or "W is unhealthy because it contains too much Z"? Although there is some truth in these kind of statements, it is only half of the story. There may be two problems with a nutrient. If you take too few or too much of it. The healthy well balanced diet contains an amount between the lower and upper limit for each nutrient.
This software shows and calculates nutrient content as absolute values, and a percentage of the limits of the Dietary reference intakes (DRI, EAR, RDA, UL) or "adequate intakes" (AI) where no DRI value exists:
- Estimated average requirement (EAR) is the value that is estimated to satisfy 50% of the people in a particular life stage group.
- Recommended dietary allowance (RDA) meets the requirement of 97% of the group.
- Adequate intake (AI) is a value observed on a group of healthy individuals (so it is considered the right amount).
- Tolerable upper intake level (UL) is the maximum consumption for 97% of the group without adverse effects.
A well balanced diet contains 100% of the RDA or AI values, and stays within the UL limit.
How to…
Query Food Data
In the Food tab of the main window, select food group in the "Group" combo, enter keyword to search in the names, press the button "Select food items", and finally select the food from the "Item" combo.
Compile Meals
Meals are custom made combination of food items. You can create a new meal, add some amount of food items to it, and see the aggregated nutrient contents of the whole meal. It can be a breakfast, lunch, or everything for a whole day.
In the "Meal" tab of the main window:
- to create a new meal: type its name into the "New meal" input line, and press "Add meal"
- to filter the meals you can select: type parts of its name optionally separated by a "%" character
- to select the current meal to see and edit: select it in the combo box after "Name:"
- to add a food item to a meal: select the food item in the "Food" tab, then press the "Add food item" in the "Meal" tab
- to change the amount of the food item in the current meal: click in the "Weight [g]" column, and edit it
- to remove a food item from the current meal: select its line, and click on the "Remove food item" button
Schedule Meals
In the "Schedule" tab of the main window, you can see and calculate nutrient contents of meals accumulated during an arbitrary period, by specifying the start and the end of the period. It can be for example 1 day, 3 days, 1 week, 23.5 days, etc.
- to set the period: select the start date and time with the date and time widgets, then press "Begin". Select the end date and time, then press "End". Press "Set period". Now the middle list shows the meals scheduled into the current period, and the right content view shows the total nutrient contents of those meals.
- to schedule a meal: select the meal in the "Meal" tab, set the date and time in the Schedule tab, then press the "Add meal"
- to change the quantity of an item: click in the "Quantity" column, and edit it
- to remove an item from the schedule: select its line, and click on the "Remove meal" button
Change User Setting
In the "Eater" tab of the main window, choose the life stage group, age and weight of the person for whom you want to see DRI values.
