The FastDay Forum

I've been using the Sparkpeople recipe calculator for years. The main problem being it is American and the words for certain foods is different.

bobbyd98683 wrote: What a wonderful tool. Thank you for the link.

Love your blog Bobby!

Juliana.Rivers wrote: Love your blog Bobby!

Thank you, Juliana. Also, thank you for your support, encouragement and comments. You are a real pick me up.

I began blogging when I began 5:2ing. At the very least, I thought it would keep me accountable but it seems as though others have been encouraged by reading my ramblings. It has been a wonderful tool to meet other 5:2ers or simply people interested in getting healthy. If others come to the 5:2 diet by means of my blog, then wonderful! I think everyone, who is able, should eat this way.

NikkiN wrote: I really like the http://www.myfitnesspal.com site. It really has a large data base of foods.

Agreed, think myfitnesspal is brilliant especially now that the barcode scanner has been added!!

For any Brits and other EU based people: A quick look at this calculator indicates that it uses the USDA database for nutrition and calorie counts.

This may confuse UK and EU people as the calorie content for many items will be vastly different to those given by their local supermarkets.

The difference seems to be caused in the method used to calculate calorific content. The US uses the output of a Bomb Calorimeter (essentially burn the sample and measure the resulting heat) which includes the calorific content in some foods that humans cannot process into energy).

The EU mandates a calculated approach, adding up the various components of a food to give it's calorie content. This is particularly true for high fibre vegetables...

So for example:

Celeriac is given as 42cal per 100g in the USDA database. In the UK various supermarkets list it as between 17-21cal per 100g. Which is a huge difference when you are trying to keep to 500/600cal on a fast day.

Unfortunately the central EU database is chargeable. The USDA database however is free to access. And every online calorie counter I've found seems to use the US data.