Eaters have a load of tools at our fingertips to help us decide what to eat. Here are links to a few offered through the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other agencies:
■ My Plate Plan. Fill in your age, sex, activity and goal weight. You'll get a plan that shows you what and how much to eat that fits within your calorie goals.
■ Food Composition Database. This is the site used by other databases for nutrient information on specific foods.
■ Drink Size Calculator. This National Institutes of Health site will tell us how much alcohol is in that cup of beer at the ballgame.
■ Dietary Supplement Label Database. On this site of the National Institutes of Health, you can look up ingredients, products or manufacturers of everything from body building formulas to vitamins and minerals for senior citizens.
■ Pregnancy Weight Gain Calculator. Enter your height and pre-pregnancy weight and you'll learn how much weight you should probably gain during pregnancy. This site also leads to other nutrition for moms-to-be.
■ Can I Eat This? Handy dandy mobile app for travelers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Select the country you're in and answer a few questions about what you're thinking about eating or drinking.
■ Evaluate Health Information. This site from the National Institutes of Health features tutorials, videos and other tools to help users assess the reliability and credibility of health information from magazines (and newspapers), TV and the Internet.
Barbara Quinn is a registered dietitian and certified diabetes educator and author of Quinn-Essential Nutrition (Westbow Press, 2015).
Style on 06/17/2019