Hi folks!

I am wondering if anyone has any experience with the various on-line food diary or calorie counter sites? I have used two of them (Apex and My-Calorie-Counter), and have likes and dislikes about both.

Apex: too expensive, requires Internet Explorer (yuk!)

My-Calorie-Counter: great price, but does not have nearly as good of portion options as Apex, often requiring that I manually calculate a portion (e.g., Miracle whip is measured ONLY in tablespoons).

Anyone have recommendations (positive or negative) for other sites?

I use FitDayPC. There is an online version that I used for a long time, but the PC version allows for better custom foods. The PC version, for example, allows you to add each ingredient and then gives you a total for each nutrient.

www.fitday.com is free.

You can certainly add each ingredient to a custom food to the online version. The PC version does have some nice bells & whistles (the net carb column!).

If you're just looking things up, there's the USDA site:

www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/search/

and can be downloaded to your desktop at:

www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=8964

If you're looking up some commercial foods, there's www.dietfacts.com

Some people are fans of www.sparkpeople.com

As to an item that's only listed in Tbs., there's 16 Tbs. to a cup. There's all sorts of conversion sites... you should find one using Google. Even Fitday doesn't have every measurement for every food, so sometimes math does get involved.

Hope you find something you like!

Have you looked at The Daily Plate?

It has pros and cons, like any of them.

Thanks for the comments. I did try The Daily Plate, but really was not happy with it (although it was long enough ago I don't even remember why). I have used the USDA site, but did not know about the ability to download it to the my desktop -- I'm going to try that.

I might try FitDay also -- I like the idea of being able to use the program locally.