Diet Sleuth Version 3.0.0

    July 30, 2000

Introduction

Diet Sleuth is a program which allows you to track your nutritional intake for a given day.  It draws from a database of over 5000 different foods which provides information on the calories, fat grams, carbohydrates and protein within each food, as well as other nutritional data.  

Diet Sleuth is a useful tool to monitor what you eat. As always, you should check with your doctor before undertaking any type of diet. 

Below is a list of the features included in Diet Sleuth, as well as a brief description of each.  

Main Window - This is the primary screen for Diet Sleuth, and will be the one used more frequently.  It includes access to the food lists, your list of foods consumed that day, and the nutritional breakdown of each food as well as the totals for the day.

Food Entry Window - You will see this window by double-clicking on a food you wish to add to your daily menu.  You will enter in the number of servings of the food eaten, and to which meal the food is designated.   The serving size for the food is listed in this window as well.  There is also a handy conversion calculator to determine servings in measurements other than the one given.

Custom Foods - In order to add foods not in the database, there is a custom foods entry window, which allows you to add in new foods from their nutritional information.

Recipe Editor - You may figure out the nutritional value of a serving of any recipe you may desire to prepare by using the Recipe Editor.  Enter in the total amounts of each ingredient, how many servings it makes, and the program will figure out the nutritional values per serving and place the food in your Custom Foods catagory.

Weight Manager - This function allows you to not only track your weight, but to estimate your caloric expenditure based on your activity level.  It will estimate the amount of calories you should consume to maintain your weight, and can estimate your percent body fat as well as BMI if provided a few measurements.  It will also keep track of how many calories you consumed during the day versus the amount estimated in order to predict the possible weight loss or gain for the day.

Preferences - Here you can choose your background color for the Main window,  date format, and weight units, as well as personalize your copy of Diet Sleuth.  This is where you will enter in your name, gender, height and birthdate, some of which will be used in conjunction with the information in the weight manager.

Report Manager - Choosing this option will organize a printable report of your daily food consumption and nutritional information.

Graph Manager - This window allows you to graph various items of interest, such as daily caloric total, fat gram total, carbohydrates and protein, as well as weight.

There are also several other functions that may be performed, such as keeping a food in a list of "favorites", searching the database for a paticular food, and adding a new user to the program.

Please go on to the next chapter to find out how to install your copy of Diet Sleuth.