Meal planning for convenience or weight-control can be easily done with this feature. The top portion gives general information about your plan and simple nutritional display; the bottom portion with the white background and "Windows explorer"-like folder setup is where the actual plans and their content exist.
You can perform a detailed analysis of each plan, copy, cut & paste within the plan, have the program automatically add food to your plans and edit each food's weight or volume.
To add a new plan or to edit an existing plan, click the "New plan" or the "Edit plan" button at the top of the screen, a separate planner will appear.
New Plan (edit plan)
With this screen, please enter a plan name, the length of the plan in days, the starting date, the calorie percentage from carbohydrate, protein and fat desired, and (optional) weight loss/gain number. Once the appropriate information is entered, click "Apply." If the calculation perform results in a daily calorie intake of less than 1200, you will be asked to lengthen the plan or to reduce the number of weight-loss for the plan. (As a rule, you should not lose more than 2 pounds per week.)
The "Current" display of weight and calories is derived from the personal "Profile" you updated. Below it are the numbers ideal or "optimal" for your height and the maintenance calories required. If the optional weight-control feature is activated, the "desired" section will show the weight you want to be at and the daily calorie intake necessary per your plan length to bring about that weight loss/gain.
Comparison of Calories and Fat
This section of the Meal-plan shows in graphical form the percentage breakdown of the calorie and fat content in a selected plan, day, meal or food. The two color bars represent the goal (from your plan) and the current (actual) percentages of a selected plan. Choose either to see Calories or fat with the oval buttons.
For calories, blue represents carbohydrate calories, yellow represents protein calories and magenta represents fat calories; the goal setting may be changed in the Planner screen.
For fats, blue represents monounsaturated fat, yellow represents polyunsaturated fat, and magenta represents saturated fat. The goal setting cannot be changed; it is at a default of 33%, 33%, 33%. As long as the saturated fat percentage does not exceed 33%, you are within acceptable health range.
By looking at the current percentages and comparing that to the goal percentages, you can easily tell if a total plan, a day's, a meal's or a single food (depending on the selection) contains unhealthy level of fat calories or saturated fat.
Nutrition percentage to daily value
This color bar indicates the percentage of a selected nutrient (default is calorie) as compared to your daily value need (DV). This DV is based on your plan's calorie value, not on your personal profile. With this feature, you can quickly tell if the food in your plan comes close to your daily need in using a selected plan.
The plan outline screen
The bottom section of the Meal-plan screen lists your plan(s) and features an expandable/collapsible presentation similar to the "Windows explorer" screen in Windows 95. By default, when a plan is created, one entry with the plan name is added to this section and has a "+" symbol preceding. To expand a plan to browse its content, click on the "+" symbol; it will expand to list the number of days the plan houses. Click on the "+" symbol preceding each day to expand into the meal listings. Once you have expanded a plan to its fullest, food can be dragged into any entry (except the plan name itself or a food listing). Use the up and down keys on the keyboard or the scroll bar to browse through an expanded plan.
Adding food
There are three ways you can add food into a meal plan.
1) Drag food from the table and place it in a day or a meal in that day (depending on where it's dropped). Make sure that an entry listing is open by using the "+" function.
2) Click the "Add food" or the "Search" button to bring up the Search screen. Navigate through it as usual to access a food. Once found, click on it to automatically drop into a selected listing (a day or meal), or you can drag the food into another listing.
3) Click the "Auto add" button to let the computer randomly select food from the database. It adds up the food until a close match to your predetermined calorie value is reached. You can then use the cut & paste buttons to move food into a particular meal.
As usual, when you right-click on a food on the Search screen, you can preview its nutritional content to see if this is a food you want to include in your plan. Of course, once in the plan, you can also edit it to arrive at a more precise portion.
Edit food
Click on the "Edit food" button to bring up the edit screen. On it a picture of the selected food is displayed for easy identification. Click on the measure display to change its weight/volume and click "update." The new value is registered and can be viewed on the Display bar. View the nutritional display on the Meal-plan to see if this change is acceptable. If not, click the "Undo" button on the "Edit food" screen to revert back to its original value. (Note: If another food is selected after an update, the undo feature is no longer available).
You can change the measurement unit from metric to standard by clicking on the white arrow to the right of a food's weight/volume.
Tip: When the "Edit food" screen is active, use the up and down keys on the keyboard to scroll through food to see its image and weight/volume. Alternatively, the Display bar will show current information on any selected day, meal or food.
To table
If a plan's preset date matches the current calendar date upon starting the "Family Nutritionist," the program will ask if you want to bring that day's food to the table. Clicking "Yes" will copy food from the plan to the table. You can then edit the food selection or value and save it as that day's record if it matches your actual food intake.
You can also select any day, meal or food from any plan, click "To table" and it will be distributed on the kitchen table for processing. With this feature, you can preset many meals and just bring them to the current date instead of having to reconstruct it each time.
Delete
You can select any plan or food, click "Delete" and it will purge the selection from the Meal-plan screen. However, when a day or a meal is selected, by using the Delete feature it will only purge the food content from these listings. This way, you can refill your plan without having to create a new one.
If you want to reduce or increase the number of days in a plan, click "Edit plan" and change the plan length to a new value. The program will subtract or add the number of days according to the new data from the last day of the original plan length.
Analysis
To perform a more detailed analysis of nutritional content, click on the "Analyze" button. This screen will display in a graphical format the entire plan's, one day's, one meal or one food's complete nutritional value and its Daily Value (DV) in comparison with a preset planning goal.
On this screen, each available nutrient is displayed in the form of a horizontal bar. The displayed nutrient value represents the average of the plan selected, a day, a meal, or a food. The bar chart indicates the percentage of the averaged nutrient value as compared with the preset goal. A quick glance can tell you which nutrient exceeds your need and which falls short. Use the down arrow to page down to the remaining list of nutrients.
