If You Can Not Find a Food or its NutriCode in your Health Register Master Database

If you are unable to find a food in the Health Register and would like to add it, click on the plus button next to the food name search box. This will open the Add New Foods wizard. Click here for information on how to add a new food. You can also try searching for the food you can not find by clicking on Advanced Find from the find menu at the top. It will bring up a dialog box where you can enter the following information:

  1. Enter a word or phrase to apply to the Food Name search.

  2. Use the drop-down list on this dialog box to select 1 of 4 search methods.

Equals
The Food Name must match your word or phrase exactly
Begins with
The Food Name must begin with your word or phrase
Ends with
The Food Name must end with your word or phrase
Contains
The Food Name must contain your word or phrase
  1. Click OK. The food name search box will then display only those foods that meet your criteria.

We also recommend the following options:

  1. Break the food down into smaller components, or find a similar food and use it as a reasonable approximation. For example, the components of an egg salad sandwich equals 1 egg, 2 pieces of bread and a teaspoon of mayonnaise. To record this in your Health Record, mark the appropriate NutriCode bars for each of these items.

  2. Locate the food's "Nutrition Facts" label or any available nutritional information and fill in the proper bars using the simple NutriCode label conversion formula below:

Basic NutriCode Nutrition Facts label conversion formula.

Use the gram, milligram or other amounts provided in the Nutrition Facts label to create bar codes for any nutrient in the Advanced Health Recorder.

The following conversion formula is extremely useful because mandatory nutritional labeling is not only found on most food packaging, it is also found on nutritional brochures obtainable upon request from most restaurant franchises. You may discover this conversion is so fast and easy, you will prefer to calculate and record the majority of your NutriCode bars into your Health Recorder in this way.

To easily convert total fat grams from any nutritional information to fat bars on your Health Recorder, remember that every full fat bar is equal to 2 grams. If there are 4 grams of fat on a nutrition label, that amount is equal to 2 full fat bars (4 grams divided by 2 grams of fat per fat bar = 2 NutriCode bars of fat).

If a food item's nutritional label reflects 1 fat gram, enter it on your Health Recorder as 1/2 fat bar because 1 gram divided by 2 (grams of fat per fat bar) = 1/2 bar of fat. The same conversion applies when recording a .5 or a 1.5-gram amount, 1/4 or 3/4 fat bar.

Step 3. The carbohydrate and protein bars are also simple to convert. Because each bar equals 4 grams, 3 grams converts to a 3/4 bar, 2 grams converts to a 1/2 bar and 1 gram converts to a 1/4 bar respectively. That's all there is to it for the basic NutriCode!

Advanced NutriCode Nutrition Facts label conversion formula.

To convert total fat grams on a Nutrition Facts label into the proper sub-group fat bars of saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat, remember a full total fat bar is equal to 2 grams. Each full sub-group fat bar (saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fat) also equals 2 grams. If there are 4 grams of any type of sub-group fat on the Nutrition Facts label, that amount is equal to 2 of the appropriate NutriCode fat bars (2 X 2=4). If 1.5 grams of any fat is reflected on the label, it would equal a 3/4 NutriCode fat bar.

To record 1 gram of any fat on the label, use a 1/2 NutriCode fat bar. A .5 gram of any fat equals a 1/4 NutriCode fat bar.

The carbohydrate, sugar as well as protein bars all have a similar conversion process, but each bar equals 4 grams of that nutrient instead of 2 grams. That makes the conversion even easier, i.e., 1 bar equals 4 grams, 3/4 bar equals 3 grams, 1/2 bar equals 2 grams and 1/4 bar equals 1 gram.

Like fat bars, all 3 of the full fiber-related and alcohol bars equal 2 grams. Use the same 1 bar, 3/4 bar, 1/2 bar and 1/4 bar conversion process and values as in the fat group example.

To convert any of the marked vitamin and mineral nutrients, because any 1 bar equals 10% of your RDI, the percent of Daily Value listed on the food label does all the work for you. All you have to remember is that each 10% of the Daily Value equals 1 bar of any of the nutrients listed to the left. It's that easy (20% Daily Value equals 2 bars of that nutrient, 5% Daily Value is a 1/2 bar, and so on).

Daily dietary fiber requirements depend on the number of calories consumed. Many nutrition experts recommend diets that contain approximately 20 to 30 grams of dietary fiber daily or 11.5 grams of fiber for every 1,000 calories consumed. For most individuals, each fiber bar represents 10% of their daily needs.

Many nutrition experts recommend total sugar intake remain within less than 10% of your total caloric intake. This 10% includes both naturally occurring and added sugars. (The World Health Organization recommends total sugar intake remain under 25 grams per day [6 1/4 sugar bars] or about 5% of the total caloric intake of a 2,000 calorie reference diet.)

The U.S. Dietary Goals recommend that total caloric intake for total dietary fat (30%) be divided equally between saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats (10% each). (If you do not use the U.S. Dietary Goals' percentages, insert your own percentages.)

Once you establish nutrient levels for your chosen program, obtain your bar amounts for cholesterol, sodium, potassium, vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium and iron using the following scale. Each bar equals 1/10 of your RDI's. These RDI's consist of: cholesterol (300 mg.), sodium (2,400 mg.), potassium (3,500 mg.), vitamin A (5,000 IU), vitamin C (60 mg.), calcium (1 gram, 1,000 mg.) and iron (1.8 mg.).

  1. Record the food's name and portion on a piece of paper, then use HealthKeeper's 9,000+ NutriCode Master Reference listing available for all registered HealthKeeper users at our web site, www.health-runr.com) in the registered users section.

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