FNC

Food Nutrient Calculator: Detailed information

What is FNC?

FNC is a read-only database containing data on 82 nutrients for 6210 foods. For a full list of the nutrients, click here (or on the button to the left).

FNC uses data from the United States Department of Agriculture Standard Reference Release 13 (1999) nutrient database

With FNC, you can:

Quickly and conveniently search for a specific food and display the food's nutrient values (and other data) for a 100 gram edible portion

Calculate nutrient values on up to 15 different food weight measurements

Enter a weight for any food, and FNC will calculate all the nutrient weights for that food with a single button-click!

Rank foods according to the availability of any nutrient

Export calculations to a wide variety of formats for use in other programs such as spreadsheets and word processors

Print informative, neat reports on any displayed data

Custom selection of nutrients to display

Exceptionally easy to use:

all menu commands have on-screen button equivalents

all objects display 'fly-over' and extended message-bar hints on their use when the mouse is held of them for a couple of seconds

FNC comes with a comprehensive Help file that includes all the USDA information on its SR13 files (including definitions of technical terms, methods of calculation, references, etc.)

FNC is fully integrated with TMD, HerbBase and NMD: if you have any of these programs, the program will automatically display a toolbar button that lets you run any of the programs from within FNC. TMD, HerbBase and NMD also now have buttons that allow you to start FNC from within any of them!

Click on the thumbnail below to view FNC's main form.

The grid in the upper left corner of the form contains a listing of all the foods in the database. The lower grid displays the nutrient values for the currently-active food (i.e., the one with the pointer to its left in the upper grid). The other fields on the form supply additional information about the current food.

Using FNC

1. Searching for a specific food and displaying its nutrient values

To find a particular food, click on the 'Search (list)' button (or press F8): a 'Locate' dialog box will appear into which you enter a search criterion. Click on the thumbnail below to see a full-sized image of the dialog box.

Click on the dialog's 'First' or 'Next' button (or press Enter); FNC will search the database for food descriptions containing any of the word(s) contained in your search criterion, and display them all in a new dialog box. Click on the thumbnail below to see a full-sized image of the dialog box containing the search results.

Scan the list in the dialog's grid and locate the food you're interested in. Then double-click the food description and voila! -- the main form is redisplayed with your selected food active, and its nutrient values shown in the lower grid.

2. Displaying nutritional values for food weights other than 100 grams

FNC can automatically display nutrient values for up to 15 additional weight values for any given food. (The exact number varies greatly in the USDA data: most foods have just one or two additional weight values.)

Click on the 'Other Weights' button on FNC's main form: a dialog containing a grid will open that shows up to, and at least, the first five nutritional values for weights contained in the USDA database. Click on the thumbnail below to see a full-sized image of an example.

Note that:

Where more than five additional weight values are available, a 'More Weights' button will appear on the form to let you access those values

Buttons on the form enable you print the data and/or export them to external files for use in other programs and/or calculate nutrient values for a weight for the food that you specify:

The 'Print' button appears on every 'Other Weights' form because reports can print up to a maximum of five additional food weight values

The 'Export' button appears on the first 'Other Weights' form because there are no horizontal restrictions like those pertaining to printed reports

The 'Calculate' button appears on the last 'Other Weights' form you can display so that you don't waste time calculating nutrient values for a specific food weight that already exists (see below)

3. Displaying nutrient values for a user-entered food weight

Clicking on the 'Calculate' button brings up a dialog box into which you can enter a custom weight for the currently active food. Click the thumbnail below for a full-size picture.

Click on the dialog's 'OK' button (or press Enter): FNC will do the necessary calculations and display the results in another form. Click the thumbnail below for a full-size picture.

4. Exporting data

Wherever data are displayed in FNC, you can save them to a file for later use in other programs such as word processors and spreadsheets. Just click on the 'Export' button (), choose a file format from the dialog that appears, and indicate whether you want to send the file to the screen or directly to a file on disk.

Notes:

If you send the exported file to the screen, you will need to choose File | Save from the menu of the displayed application in order to save the file to disk. If you choose the 'Export to File' option, a standard Windows 'Save' dialog will appear to let you choose a folder and filename for the file

Currently-supported file formats:

HTML (useful if you are supporting a web site!);

Microsoft Word;

Microsoft Excel (the default);

Text (Notepad-like files);

Rich text (use this if you want to retain all formatting features and import into other word processors such as WordPerfect);

Comma-delimited text (CSV);

Tab-delimited text;

Data Interchange format (DIF);

SYLK format;

Clipboard.

5. Printing reports

As with exports, any and all data that you see displayed in FNC can be printed in a report. Wherever you see the 'Print' icon () on a button (just about everywhere!), click on the button to open a report preview window. You can scan the preview window if you wish, or just click on its 'Print' button (). Click on the thumbnail below for a picture of FNC's print preview screen.

Notes:

	When printing reports on ranked food items, you are given the opportunity to limit the size of the report (a full report could require in excess of 150 pages to print!).
	FNC's 'Options/defaults' form lets you set default paper sizes of 'A4' or 'Letter' for no-fuss printing.

6. Custom selection of nutrients for display

By default, FNC displays values for all 82 nutrients. If, for whatever reason, you wish to suppress the display of values for one or many nutrient values, you can do so using FNC's nutrient selection facility.

If you have any questions about FNC, send us an email.

Download free, fully-functional trial versions of all programs.

Date last modified: Wed, 16 April 2008