The FooDosage Nutrition Calculator is an Excel based tool that enables you to figure out your own individual minimum, target, and maximum values for all the major nutrients, as well as analyze recipes and plan your personalized optimal diet. (Based largely on USDA food data and National Academy of Sciences recommendations).
Contents
Light Version
Foodosage Nutrition Calculator Light – Form filled in
Because of the comparatively small size (and fewer relative formulas), this should run much faster than the full version, and if you’re just looking for the RDA calculator, this is the version you want.
Size: 573KB
Requires: Microsoft Excel, or a program that can open Excel files.
Developed on, and optimized for: Microsoft Excel 2013 for Windows. Note that on different versions, there might be bugs such as missing formatting options or formulas.
Features:
- Individual RDA Calculator
- NAS Nutrient Information Sheet
Download
Full Version
Foodosage Nutrition Calculator – Diet Evaluator (Daily) Filled in
This is the version I am using myself, both for my personal nutrition as well as for foodosage.com articles. Unfortunately, due to the limitations of Excel, it is not exactly user friendly and requires a lot of processing power. Still, the reason I made it is the reason I’m using it: I was not completely happy with the scope of information/features I could find online (in one place).
I hope to be able to produce a dedicated piece of software that will combine the features of the current full version with a user friendly UI and optimized resource requirements, plus some online functionality and/or a website integration. Until then, this is my nutrition calculator of choice. And maybe it will become yours.
Size: 10MB
Requires: Microsoft Excel, or a program that can open Excel files.
Developed on, and optimized for: Microsoft Excel 2013 for Windows. Note that on different versions, there might be bugs such as missing formatting options or formulas.
Features:
- Individual RDA Calculator
- Daily Diet Evaluator
- Weekly Diet Evaluator
- Recipe Analyzer
- Saved Recipes
- Custom Entries to the Food Database (local)
- NAS Nutrient Information Sheet
Download
Manual
Individual RDA Calculator
Foodosage Nutrition Calculator – Form empty
Step 1: Fill in all the fields. You can choose between centimeters and inches, and kilograms and pounds from the drop down menus in the “Height” and “Weight” text boxes.
Step 2: Either choose an approximate activity level, or enter a precise calorie amount. The latter method is useful if you already know your calorie requirements. If you enter a custom amount, this will override the drop down selection.
Step 3: Choose your diet.
Step 4: Choose your desired Macronutrient distribution. This will determine the target values for Protein, Fat, and Carbohydrates. To enter your own percentage values, choose “Custom” and enter them in the fields below.
Step 5: Make individual Adjustments: If you know you need more or less of a certain nutrient than the average person, you can adjust the factor of the recommended amounts here. 200% means double the average amount, 300% three times as much, etc.
That’s it, once everything is filled in, you can select the next sheet from the bottom ribbon (“Individual RDA Results”, or “Printer Friendly Results”), and you should see something along the lines of this:
Foodosage Nutrition Calculator – Individual RDA Results
..or this:
Foodosage Nutrition Calculator – Printer Friendly Results (Fits on one page)
Now you know your Individual Recommended Daily Values 🙂
These results are used for the other functions of the calculator’s full version.
Diet Evaluator (Daily)
Use the Diet Evaluator to identify weak spots in your current diet, or to plan your perfect diet from the ground up, based on your Individual RDA Results.
Foodosage Nutrition Calculator – Diet Evaluator (Daily) Filled in
Step 1: Find the number of the food you want to add to the list. To do this, navigate to the page “Food List”, open the sort and filter menu in the cell “Description” (C1) and type & select the food item you are looking for. In the example below, cottage cheese.
Foodosage Nutrition Calculator – Food List Selection
If everything went according to plan, the list should now be filtered to show exclusively the item you selected. Like so:
Foodosage Nutrition Calculator – Food List Filtered
Now, copy the number in column A, switch back to the Diet Evaluator sheet, and paste it into the corresponding field (Column B).
Step 2: Enter the amount of the food you ate, or plan to eat in column D. You may change the units from grams by opening the drop down selection in column E. Note that grams and ounces are always an option, while other measurements like cups and tablespoons have not been recorded for every food item. As a rule of thumb, if it is usually measured in cups, cups should be available. The calculator will notify you if the chosen unit of measurement is not available for the chosen food.
Foodosage Nutrition Calculator – Diet Evaluator (Daily) Choosing Unit of Measurement
Step 3: Repeat until all food items for that day have been entered. Don’t forget such details as the spoon of sugar in your morning coffee.
Now, you can study your results and identify areas in need of improvement. You’re welcome to use FooDosage’s articles on which foods contain the most of a certain nutrient for inspiration when it comes to fixing a deficit in your diet. 🙂
And if you want all the numbers, not just the nutrients for which we have recommended intake levels, scroll to the right for the complete results:
Foodosage Nutrition Calculator – Complete Results
..or from a bit further away..
Foodosage Nutrition Calculator – Complete Results Panoramic View
Diet Evaluator (Weekly)
Some nutrients, namely water soluble vitamins like vitamin C, should be taken in adequate amounts daily, while the recommended levels of others such as fat soluble vitamins and minerals can be calculated as a weekly average.
Don’t panic if you don’t meet your Vitamin E goals one day, or if you get too much vitamin K the next. if it balances throughout the week, you should be just fine. (The liver stores excess fat soluble nutrients until needed. If an excess is consumed on average, the corresponding dangers of overconsumption become relevant).
This is where the weekly Diet Evaluator comes in.
Foodosage Nutrition Calculator – Diet Evaluator (Weekly) Day 7
It works just the same as the daily version, except there are seven daily entry forms with their subtotals (scroll down) before you get your weekly results at the very end:
Foodosage Nutrition Calculator – Diet Evaluator (Weekly) Totals
Recipe Analyzer
Similar in form and function to the daily Diet Evaluator (because it’s based on it), the Recipe Analyzer offers some key differences:
- The results are (also) calculated per 100g
- You can correct the total weight of the ingredients after preparation (example: rice/beans/lentils)
- You can save recipes to use them in the Diet Evaluator. This could be your own famous homemade apple pie, or it could just be the amount of milk and sugar in your morning coffee, so you don’t have to enter those separately for each and every day.
Foodosage Nutrition Calculator – Recipe Analyzer, Ingredients Entered
Step 1: Fill in the form in the same fashion as with the daily Diet Evaluator.
Step 2: At the bottom of the form (D54), you have the option of entering the correct total weight, should the preparation of the ingredients have changed their raw total weight. This is very relevant to the “Per 100g” values. If the field is left blank, the ingredients’ total weight will be used for calculation.
Foodosage Nutrition Calculator – Recipe Analyzer, Correct Total
Step 3: Copy the “Per 100g” values. The easiest way to do this is to select cell Z55 and press ctrl + shift + right arrow (to select all relevant cells), then ctrl+c.
Foodosage Nutrition Calculator – Recipe Analyzer, Copy Values
Step 4: Paste the copied cells into the “Saved Recipes” Area. Select the first cell of the first empty line, in this case Z66, and “paste as values”.
Foodosage Nutrition Calculator – Recipe Analyzer, Paste as Values
Step 5: Name your Recipe. (Column C, same line as pasted values.)
Foodosage Nutrition Calculator – Recipe Analyzer, Name Recipe
Now your recipe is ready to be used in the Diet Evaluator(s). If everything went well, it should also appear in the Food List (at the bottom):
Foodosage Nutrition Calculator – Food List, Featuring Saved Recipes and Custom Entries (Blanks filtered out)
Custom Entries
Is your favorite power bar not in the food list? Do know the nutrient profile? Great, let’s add it!
Foodosage Nutrition Calculator – Custom Entries, Filling In
Step 1: Fill in the description field and nutrient values.
Step 2: ???
Step 3: Profit.
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