Albeit not among the most recent news (at year and a half old), it might be appropriate to comment on Mat på data 5.0 v2 ("Food on computer") which was last year taken over by the public Food Safety Authorities (Mattilsynet) and rendered free. A great step forward for those who teach food&healt in the Norwegian (Scandinavian) countries, and of course others with interest in having a closer look at food and diet.
Study up to three foodstuffs/dishes simultaneously in detail
Just plug in the ingredients and amounts. It even allows for a large number of ready-made/processed dishes and semi-processed foods, and with an impressive detail in varieties of various foodstuffs (i.e. 15 different varieties of potatoes or potato dishes). Whenever you choose a food or dish, you can choose the amount by grams, number (i.e. no. of tomatoes), volume, or portions (i.e. two slices of pumpernickel bread, one glass of milk). The output is energy content and all the different nutrients, both in numbers and graphically (a couple of varieties). A copy-function for exporting to word processing software etc. in included. The screenshots below show information on the following small meal:
- One egg fried in butter
- Two slices of pumpernickel (black) bread
- Five cherry tomatoes
Create your own dish and/or mealIf you have a recipe of your own its no problem regiserking this in the database, and you can then compare your own chocolate cake recipe with the one you buy in the supermarket, or compare your modified version with grandma's. Also, it is possible to register a whole meal as one single entity (i.e. your regular breakfast of cereals, milk and cup of coffee).
Analyse/create a week's diet
If you have registered meals (see above), these might be put together to set up a week's complete diet.
Finally, it also includes some general recommendations for nutrient and energy intake based on a person's age, sex, activity level etc.
It may be downloaded for free from http://matportalen.no/Emner/matpadata. English translation (of the download page, not the software unfortunately).Truly, a gift.
Erik
I thought those of you interested in the intersect between science and the kitchen might be interested in a Podcast the New York Academy of Sciences just posted about the Experimental Cuisine Collective (http://experimentalcuisine.googlepages.com) in New York, which is an outreach program to make polymer science accessible through the use of food. In the Podcast, Kent Kirschenbaum, one of the founders of the group and a biochemist at NYU, talks about some of the group's ideas, goals, and processes.
ReplyDeleteYou can check it out here.