About the Nutrition Log and Data Interpretation

About the database
The USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference (SR) is the major source of food composition data in the United States. It provides the foundation for most food composition databases in the public and private sectors. As information is updated, new versions of the database are released. This version, Release 18 (SR18), contains data on 7,146 food items and up to 136 food components.

 

Cautions on calorie counting data interpretation

The database we are using has the 7,146 foods. All foods will have the determined values of water, calories, protein, fat and carbohydrate.  NOT ALL of them have complete nutrient profiles. ‘N/A’ is seen in the 'advanced reports' when this value is not reported.  Examples are 'Vitamin D' - only 477 foods have this value reported.

 

For BT logs in daily, weekly, monthly and yearly summed reports, ‘N/A’ is treated as a ‘0’ so everything most likely will not add-up perfectly (example, individual amino acids adding up to the amount of protein….some foods lack the amino acid compositional breakdown.)

 

THIS NUTRITION SOFTWARE IS STILL BETA! Always exercise caution in any interpretation. There may still be bugs in this software. PLEASE check our math in the totals and reports/graphs for main nutrient items that have values associated with them.

 

Regardless of good math, several things simply WILL NOT add up, details at the end. Also these foods will not ‘exactly’ match what’s on a real nutrition label due to rounding, lots, manufacturer, year, etc. But they are reasonably close based on the foods we tested from our fridges and pantry. You will also note that these numbers will not exactly line-up with other nutrition databases due to different database version, sources, and the aforementioned issues.

Carbohydrate calculation assumptions
Because the analysis of total dietary fiber, total sugars, and starch are performed separately, the sum of these carbohydrate fractions may not add up to the main carbohydrate-by-difference value.

Fat calculations assumptions
Values for total saturated, monounsaturated, and polyunsaturated fatty acids may include individual fatty acids not reported; therefore, the sum of their values may exceed the sum of the individual fatty acids. In rare cases, the sum of the individual fatty acids may exceed the sum of the values given for the total saturated fatty acids (SFA), monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFA), and polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA). These differences are generally caused by rounding and may be relatively small.

Zero values for individual fatty acids should be understood to mean that trace amounts may be present. When g fatty acids per 100 g of total lipid were converted to g fatty acids per 100 g of food, values of less than 0.0005 were rounded to 0.

Protein calculations and assumptions
The individual amino acids for a food may not add up to the amount of protein in that food. Not all foods will have an amino-acid breakdown.

MANY THANKS TO marmadaddy...he tested many of the features, caught several bugs and found many things I never even thought of.