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Guidelines for Selecting
Professional Nutrient Analysis Software
Written by Steve
Kinsley, RD
(Last updated
October 17, 2003)
As a nutrition professional, choosing the
right nutritional analysis software package may seem like a confusing and
daunting task. There are many products on the market with wide price
variations, and the differences between them may not be readily obvious.
This article is intended to give you some guidelines to help you make the
right choice for your particular needs.
1. You first need to determine the main
purpose for using the nutrient analysis software in your particular setting.
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Everyone should take into consideration nutrient
losses due to cooking and preparation-related yield losses. The degree of
precision with which they are handled becomes more important as legal
requirements for analytical accuracy increase (the most stringent requirements
are in the field of mandatory nutrition labeling). When legal requirements
are less stringent, the importance of the degree of accuracy may need to be
weighed against other comparative criteria that are important to the user.
The best software
packages either allow the user to create yield variations of food items, or have fields in their recipe and food item databases that allow
you to enter mathematical factors to calculate these losses.
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Both of ESHA's
software packages (Food Processor
for private practice or counseling needs, and Genesis
R&D for contract recipe analysis or food industry product development
and nutrition labeling needs) handle such loss factors by allowing the user to
add sub-variations of food items and providing fields where the user can enter
percentage loss/gain in total weight resulting from the cooking process, and the
percentage of the food item lost in pre-cooking preparation of the food item
(commonly known as % refuse). Genesis
R&D takes this one step further in recipes/product formulas by allowing
the user to specify percentage yield losses/gains attributable to moisture, fat,
and mechanical processing.
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When adding a food item to a recipe in Food
Smart Professional Edition the Factors tab includes fields for Raw
Ingredient Handling Loss (equivalent to % refuse), Cooked Ingredient Handling
Loss (equivalent to mechanical processing losses), and Moisture Loss (or
gain). The Moisture Loss field in Food
Smart Professional is less accurate than the equivalent in Genesis
R&D because it applies the specified % to all nutrients rather than just
to the food item's total weight and moisture content. The same is true of Food
Smart Professional's Retention Factor field - a better way of applying
nutrient retention factors is to create a copy of an existing food item and
change the applicable nutrient content values individually, using known nutrient
retention factors. (Some known nutrient retention factors can be obtained
through a USDA publication freely downloadable from http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/Data/index.html#retention
).
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If you are using the software primarily for
client or patient counseling, determine if you want to be able to factor
in the effects of "everyday" or athletic activities on nutritional requirements.
Most software packages allow you to do this in a basic way through general
stress/activity factors, but some allow you to specify a wide range of
specific physical activities.
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For more information about software packages
that integrate the effects of the caloric expenditures associated with
a range of everyday and sport activities, click on the following links:
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If you are using the software primarily for
public health or other research, you will want the data to be easily exported
or utilized by statistical analysis software. ESHA's
software products have built in abilities to export data in formats commonly
importable into other software. Entire databases (versus individual items)
can also be imported or exported through a very affordable add-on utility known
as ESHAPort. ESHA's
incredibly deep and complete range of nutrients
and nutrient factors will also meet most researchers' needs, even if obscure
nutrients are involved.
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Private practice dietitians who work in
multiple long term care facilities may want to backup (or export) only selected
food items, recipes, menus or people in one facility's copy of the software, and
restore (or import) these items into their own personal copy of the
software. ESHA's Food Processor (SQL version)
allows the user to export by database categories (Recipes, Persons, or
Ingredients), but Food
Smart allows the user to backup selected individual Food Items, Recipes,
Menus or People and restore either all of the backed up items, or only selected
items within the backup file. Food
Smart's Active Community feature also allows dietitians to share selected
items with others belonging to the same Active Community group via the Internet,
a useful feature if you work in collaboration with others. (ESHA's Food Processor (SQL version)
can also accomplish this in a less integrated manner by allowing the user to
send an export file to another user by e-mail attachment.)
2. The second point you need to consider is which nutrient database you wish to use as a reference (or whether you
would like the option to use more than one). In North America, the typical choice
is between the Canadian Nutrient File (CNF) and the United States Department
of Agriculture (USDA) standard reference database.
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ESHA's
software products allow for concurrent access to both the CNF and USDA, with
the added benefit of having numerous brand name products. ESHA's
nutrient database is also considered one of the
most complete in the world (in terms of having very few
missing nutrient values).
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Food
Smart currently allows you to choose between the CNF and USDA database
when installing the product. However, the user cannot access both
databases at the same time.
3. An important consideration is whether
or not you can easily identify whether "0" values in a nutritional analysis
are a "true 0" or simply a "0" due to the fact that the underlying database
contains no information about the nutrient. Not all foods have been
fully analyzed for all nutrients, so it is entirely possible that a "0"
is simply the result of a lack of information. Food
Smart and ESHA
both allow you to see how many foods or recipes specified in a menu or intake
analysis have missing nutrient information, although ESHA's
software is the only one which currently
allows the user to pinpoint which food items in a
recipe or menu have "0" nutrient values.
4. Ensure that the software package uses
the dietary intake standards with which you wish to work, or gives you
a choice. ESHA and Food
Smart give you the choice between Canadian and American
standards. ESHA
and Food
Smart are implementing
use of the
joint Canadian/American Dietary Reference Intakes (DRI's) as they are released,
although at present Food Smart has only implemented the
DRI's released up to 2001.
5. Determine how important it is to you
to be able to customize meal or menu-planning structures for individuals
you may be counseling, or to be able to customize or sub-categorize the
food item and recipe database categories to suit your needs.
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ESHA
and Food
Smart both allow you to create your own database categories. However,
ESHA's Food Processor SQL
product is the only one of the two that currently allows users to create subcategories (i.e categories within categories).
6. Determine
how useful the reports and their formats will be, based
on your primary purpose for using the software
(discussed in point # 1 of this article).
The best way to determine this is by evaluating
the software through demonstration downloads (most
companies allow for a demo version of their software to
be downloaded). General user-friendliness is also best
determined through demo downloads, or talking with
others you know who have used one or more software
packages. General user-friendliness is also best
determined through demo downloads, or talking with others you know who
have used one or more software packages.
7. Determine if you need to have your nutritional
analysis software integrate with other nutrition and foodservice operations
management systems. ESHA's Food Processor SQL
can accomplish this if the other software can accept data exported in comma- or
tab-delimited format.
9. Last but not least, determine what the
minimum system requirements are for the software packages you are
evaluating. Make sure your current system meets these standards.
If a vendor states both "minimum" and "recommended" system requirements,
it is best to go with their "recommended" requirements.
If you require software to run on an Apple
or Macintosh computer, visit Dine
Systems for a hard-to-find nutrient analysis program that will run
on the Macintosh operating system.
If you require further assistance to determine
which software will best meet your particular requirements, including larger
scale departmental or multi-facility systems, Nu Connexions is available
to help on a consulting
basis.
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