Food comes in infinite varieties. It is not possible for one program to cover every combination there are. But with the 'Create New Food' screen, you can literally add on as many new food as you want. If you have access to nutritional information, or if the food comes with a Nutrition Fact label attached, assigning nutrition value is very easy.
Select an image
First, an image needs to be associated with the new food. You can drag a similar food from the table to the blue picture area; a copy of the image will appear as well as its nutritional values (this way you may only need to alter a few nutritional values). Another method is to click on the "Get Image" button to select the image from a preset list. However, with this method, your nutritional data is blank and will need to be filled in manually.
Enter name and measurement
Type in a new food name, assign whether this is a liquid or solid food and enter its weight or volume measurement for 1 serving. If you are using a Nutrition Fact label from the packaging, just copy the 1 serving size and the unit measure over.
Assign nutritional values
The standard for Nutrition Fact labels is based on a 2,000 daily calorie intake for
a middle-aged female. There are two ways to enter nutritional values:
1) Simply type in the value in the yellow boxes if
you are using references other than a Nutrition
Fact label. Make sure that the food weight/
volume matches the same reference value.
2) If you are using the Nutrition Fact label as re-
ference, you will notice that on some of the
nutrients, there are no values given, only per-
centages. Since we already know that the label
is based on the profile of a middle-aged female,
we can reverse calculate the percentages back to
a nutritional value. Thus, if you encounter a
nutrient listing with only a percentage, simply
input this number in the pink "% DV" box, the
program will then automatically calculate its
proper value for you.
Tip: use the down arrow to page down for more nutrients.
Once a new food is created, you can search it with the "Customized" method in the Search
screen. You can also store it in any of the storage spaces in the kitchen interface.
