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Choosing an Online Calorie Counter

By Terry Dunkle*

The Web is peppered with online calorie counters these days, but most are cumbersome, inaccurate, or limited in scope. Some also have ulterior motives.

Here are tips I've garnered from building and testing calorie counters for more than 20 years:

Online Calorie Counter Accuracy

Look for a calorie counter that uses the latest update of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Nutrient Database for Standard Reference, which is the gold standard for the 10,000 most popular American foods. The latest update is Release 21, published in September 2008.

Beware of calorie counters that allow users to submit additional foods. These are notoriously inaccurate, and often bloated with thousands of duplicates.

Online Calorie Counter Privacy

Think twice if an online diet tool asks for your email address. You may get bombarded with spam from the website and other companies to whom it sells your information.

Even if it doesn't ask, a website may harvest addresses from your email program and spam not only you, but also your friends, family, and co-workers. Always read the website's privacy policy.

To guarantee privacy, consider buying a calorie counter that installs on your own computer instead of working on a website.

Online Calorie Counter Speed

If you're like most dieters, you'll need to log 20 to 40 different foods each day. On most websites, that's a lot of clicking and scrolling.

In addition, every time you log a food, you'll have to wait for information to travel back and forth between the Web and your computer. Again, you might do better with software installed on your hard drive. It's generally a lot faster.

Online Calorie Counter Versatility

Look for a calorie counter that also reveals your intake of other important nutrients, such as carbohydrates, fats, protein, vitamins, and minerals. Most programs can track these in the same time it takes to count calories, and the information is much more valuable to your health.

The best calories counters also let you log your exercise and receive extra calories for it, depending on the nature, speed, and duration of the activity.

Online Calorie Counter Cost

Some Web-based calorie counters are free, but they force you to look at ads or receive emails about other products. You might be better off spending $20 to $50 on calorie counter software that you install on your computer.

One such calorie counter, DietPower®, not only monitors 33 nutrients and exercise, but automatically adjusts your calorie budget to reflect changes in your metabolism. You can download a free, no-obligation trial from DietPower's website. If you purchase the program, you still have a one-year, no-questions-asked, 100-percent money-back guarantee.

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