Collecting Dietary Information

Hi People,

So I’ve started on my quest to quantify my dietary information today. Nothing much, manage to record what went into my digestive system on a piece of paper. I have also open up an account on Nutritiondata.com. So my introductory attempt in obtaining dietary information quickly ran into some obstacles.

And I was wondering if any more experienced QSers would be kind enough to share their knowledge, resources and expertise with me on the tools and methods one could use to obtain more precise dietary information.

My issue I think is a geographical one. I am located in Singapore and Singapore has a diverse culinary culture. When eating out, a typical dish you can find at the Singapore hawker is created from an array of ingredients which makes quantifying the dish in terms of nutritional value considerably harder when compared to obtaining the same information from processed food products. In so far to my knowledge, the food database in Singapore is limited. There are a couple of websites I have found which offer such information but they are very limited.

I am therefore interested to know if there is anyway I can go about building my own database and measuring the nutritional value of what I eat.

Respectfully,
Derrick :slight_smile:

Hey Derrick,

Thanks for your post. If I got you right, you need a database of nutritional values of typical dishes from Singapore or a device that identies nutrional data of your dish when eating out (with some kind of sensor). If you meant it like that, I cant help ya

Hi Cayron,

Thank you for your reply. You hit the nail on the head! I am indeed looking for a database of nutritional values of typical dishes I can find in Singapore or a device/method/way that will allow me to break down the nutritional data of my dish when eating out.

You’ll probably want to sign up for some food tracking site that allows you to create and save your own dishes based on their ingredients, and then ask people until you figure out most of the ingredients in the dishes you’re eating. Without doing that, eating out is going to be impossible to track and very hard to estimate accurately, since those dishes vary hugely in terms of nutritional value.

I haven’t done anything yet with quantifying nutrition, so I am not sure if my ideas are helpful.

One idea is to write down a recipe of what you want to eat and follow the recipe religiously. That way, you can always piece together the nutritional information just by looking at your recipe.

The other idea is to eat the same food all the time. That way you can separate and tease out the factors that cause you to lose or gain weight without gathering a huge mountain of data.

Hey there,

You seem to try the same thing as me. :slight_smile:

You may want to cook the dishes yourself and quantify them yourself. This way you could extrapolate on a meal you eat at a restaurant. Example: today I ate dish xy and the next day you try to cook it for yourself at home where you can accurately quantify the dish.

For me the solution is to just to not go out eating but to prepare everything myself from ingredients that are easily found in nutritional databases like
http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/3040/2

Stuff I buy goes into a table, I investigate all nutritional data I am interested in and I write down the amount of time in which I used up a product.

E.g. like: 1,5 kilos of natural rice with x kcal, y g protein, z g fat, bought on 13.05.2013, used up on 1.06.2013. Then I average everything.

Kind regards,

Valentin

http://www.myfitnesspal.com

This one is probably the most popular site. I sampled a few Singapore dish from an internet site and they’re all in there.

You can always add your own ingredients/recipe and it will find calories and so on.