Nutrition Health Center

Printable Food Journal, Finding the Best

By Terry Dunkle*

A printable food journal can help your doctor or dietitian spot opportunities for improvement in your eating or vitamin and mineral supplementation. The most efficient journals are those that let you log your foods on your computer or on a private webpage, choosing the foods from a large database that includes nutrition facts about each food. Here’s what to look for when choosing one of these programs:

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A Large Food Database

Don’t bother with a printable food journal that doesn’t cover at least 20,000 foods. Make sure it isn’t inflating its food count by duplicating the same food under different names (“soft drink” and “soda,” for example) or serving sizes (ounces and cups, teaspoons and tablespoons).

Even if the database is huge -- 50,000 unique foods or more -- ask whether you can add your own foods by entering nutrition facts from their labels.

Accuracy

If you’re looking at an online food journal that allows any user to contribute foods or recipes, steer clear unless the company certifies that the user-added foods are carefully checked for accuracy. Otherwise, you’ll be at the mercy of everyone else’s typographical errors.

Ask, too, whether such a database removes dupes. You won’t enjoy scrolling through dozens of copies of the same food.

Finally, ask when and how often the nutrient data is updated. If it’s more than two or three years old, look elsewhere.

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™.

Ease of Use

A printable food journal shouldn’t take you more than five to ten minutes a day to maintain. Test-drive it for a few days, and if logging your meals takes longer than that, try a different brand.

Broad Choice of Printouts

Watch for a printable food journal that lets you choose among nutrient profiles for the past day, week, month, quarter, and year. Naturally, you will also do best to choose one that prints out a particular form or style of report that your doctor or dietitian requests.

Intelligent Guidance

The very best printable food journal is one that not only analyzes the nutrients in your foods, but actually recommends foods you like that are best for your nutrient balance. The only program I know that does this is DietPower, advertised on this page. If you find another, please email me at tdunkle@dietpower.com and I will add a reference here.

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