Nutrition Health Center

NutriBase vs. DietPower: Which Is Right for You?

By Terry Dunkle*

NutriBase ($795) is one of the oldest brands of nutrition software. So is DietPower ($40). Although DietPower offers a Consultant Edition for professionals, our program is designed for ordinary dieters as well. NutriBase is mainly for professionals.

Below are five key differences between NutriBase and DietPower. (These have been checked against NutriBase and DietPower websites. Questions? Email webmaster@dietpower.com.)

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Purpose

NutriBase aims to help the professional design meal plans for a client. The dietitian possesses special knowledge that isn’t explained on the NutriBase screens. NutriBase emphasizes preparing printed reports for the client to take home.

DietPower aims to help individual dieters lose weight and balance their diet, either acting alone or occasionally with a dietitian or doctor. Unlike NutriBase, DiePower assumes no special knowledge. Instead of delivering menus on paper, it is used right on the user’s computer screen. (DietPower can prepare printed or emailed reports for the dietitian, however.)

Quality of Food Database

NutriBase offers 37,000 foods and up to 160 nutrient values for each. DietPower offers 21,000 foods and 33 nutrient values for each.

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

- -

?

ft. in.

lbs.

lbs. ?

- - ?

?

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™.

DietPower covers nearly any food you might eat, but not every brand -- you may have to log the generic version or add the food to the database yourself by keying in nutrition facts from the label. (You need to do this only once for each food.) Unlike NutriBase, DietPower covers only nutrients that most people care about – calories, saturated fat, trans fat, sodium, cholesterol, calcium, folic acid, and 26 others.

By contrast, NutriBase covers many more brand names. NutriBase also covers nutrients important in rare metabolic diseases.

Intuitiveness

DietPower “thinks” like an ordinary dieter: You’ve chosen a goal weight and target date. You wonder how many calories you can eat today and stay on track. You want the program to adjust your budget if you drift off target. You want it to award extra calories for exercise. You also want to see your nutrient balance, and which foods will help you improve it. You don’t want to analyze detailed reports, tables, or graphs.

NutriBase “thinks” like a dietitian: You want to analyze a client’s food intake, compare it with ideals for the client’s health risks, and prescribe menus. You may want to monitor nutrient intake in a clinical study, or design menus for a hospital, school, or other institution. You aren’t interested in software that is used directly by a dieter.

Nutrition Quotient

DietPower displays a single score, called your Nutrition Quotient™, that indicates how well your nutrients match your ideal. DietPower also shows you, at every moment, how this score will change if you eat any of those 21,000 foods. In addition, it shows your Smart Second™ -- the food that will increase your NQ the most if you double the amount already eaten.

NutriBase has several ways of gauging the quality of a diet. These apply mainly to the menus that NutriBase prepares, however -- not to logging of individual foods in real-time. NutriBase values are designed for interpretation by dietitians, not dieters.

Help System

DietPower’s help system comprises 500 topics written by a former Reader’s Digest editor with 30 years’ experience in medical journalism. The program also has five other kinds of help, ranging from video tutorials to “What’s This?” popups that are triggered by clicking any feature on the screen. The company provides free email and 800-number phone support from 9 a.m. to midnight Eastern, 365 days a year.

NutriBase has an ample help system, too, although the NutriBase system is written from the professional’s point of view. NutriBase provides free 800-number phone support from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Arizona time, Monday through Friday.

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