Nutrition Health Center

The Best Food Calorie Counters

By Terry Dunkle*

Only a few food calorie counters are top-quality. Here’s what to look for:

Calorie counter try free or buy Download and run DietPower's free trial Purchase DietPower risk-free

A Diary Approach

Good food calorie counters follow a diary approach: You log your foods and exercise every day (or nearly every day -- DietPower and a few other counters know how to fill gaps in your record), and the program compares your net calories consumed with a budget designed to take you to your desired body weight. They also deposit uneaten calories in a bank that you can use for extra eating later, without compromising your goal.

Large Food Selection

Don’t bother with food calorie counters that have fewer than 20,000 foods in their database. Even then, you should choose one that lets you add foods of your own, by entering data from labels. The food database should also include data on at least the 13 nutrients (besides calories) found on most labels: fat, saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrate, dietary fiber, sugars, protein, calcium, iron, vitamin A, and vitamin C.

Based on 20 years of research by DietPower, Inc., this calculator is accurate to 5 percent for most users. (It's not for people who are pregnant or have metabolic disorders. Always see a doctor before starting a diet.)

Birth Date

Sex

Tobacco user?

Height

Weight

Goal Weight

Target Date

Email Address

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?

ft. in.

lbs.

lbs. ?

- - ?

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Close Goal Weight
Your Goal Weight is the weight you want to achieve. (If it's a lot different from your current weight, you might want to set a goal that represents only the first step. Even a 10-percent weight loss will significantly improve your health.)
Close Target Date
Plan on losing no more than a pound or two per week.  Otherwise, you may eat too little for good nutrition and your weight loss may be temporary.
Close Lactating?
If you are breastfeeding, check this box and the calculator will add calories for producing milk.
Close Tobacco User?
Nicotine speeds your metabolism, making you burn calories faster. (That's why people who quit smoking gain weight.) Check this box if you average more than one cigarette, one-half pipeful, one-quarter of a cigar, or one dip of snuff or chewing tobacco per day.
Close Email Address
Once a month, DietPower will send you the most important nutrition news of the past 30 days, selected by national award-winning editors covering hundreds of medical journals. You can cancel this free, no-obligation service anytime with a single click. We produce it only to promote our weight-loss software. It won't put you on other mailing lists—We're Not That Kind of Company™.

Large Exercise Selection

Quality food calorie counters also let you log exercise in order to earn extra calories. Select one that covers at least 50 forms of physical activity, including sports, exercise machines, occupational and household tasks, and leisure pursuits. It should also take your body weight and the duration or intensity of the exercise into account when calculating the number of calories burned.

Tons of Extras

Nothing is more irksome than buying a product and finding out after the sale that a) the seller won’t help you with it, b) it doesn’t work as promised, or c) you can’t get your money back. Check all of these things beforehand by insisting on a free trial, testing the company’s support phone number and email address, and asking for its written guarantees.

A Good Company

Don’t buy a food diary template that doesn’t offer a money-back guarantee or a free trial. In addition, make sure it offers free phone and email support after the sale.

Founder, CEO, and Editor-in-Chief of DietPower, Inc.