Every week I introduce you to some companies or individuals I think may be interesting to you. This time, I want to intoduce you to some handy calculators that will help you monitor your daily intake of nutrients.

Take the time to meet...

CRON-O-Meter

FitDay

and

Nutridiary

While I was consuming only mono meals for nine days, I decided it would be an easy time to learn how to use a nutrition calculator. The thought of learning to use one while I was consuming complex meals, with multiple ingredients, always kept me from checking them out. Since it's easy to plug in only one item, like four large bananas, I figured now was the time to find out how the calculators work, and see what I could learn from them.

At first I tried FitDay. I liked it and it was easy to figure out. It's a free online service, too, so that was nice. However, I was disappointed that I couldn't track my mineral intake. So, I tried a different program.

NutritionDiary is also a free online calculator. However, the formatting seemed a bit confusing to me and I quickly gave up trying to figure it out. That's when I downloaded CRON-O-meter, a free calculator that you store on your computer.

I found CRON-O-meter to be relatively easy to navigate (I'm one of those people who rarely reads the instructions on things; I just kind of jump in and figure it out). Since my first meal was only strawberries, that was an easy item to plug in. I quickly began to enjoy documenting my daily food intake, and I think I'll continue using it for quite some time.

There are many more nutrition calculators available, but those are the three that I've had a tiny bit of experience with recently. If you've never used one before, nutrition calculators can be very helpful in getting a true look at how well you've been doing with your nutrient intake. Check them out: CRON-O-meter, FitDay, NutritionDiary and let me know what you think. If you are using a different calculator that you love, please share that in the comments for others to look into.

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If you are curious, here's a report of my averages for nutrition over the course of my mono meal adventure.

Report generated by CRON-o-Meter v0.9.3

Nutrition Summary

April 7, 2008 to April 14, 2008

Daily Averages over 8 days