First, it is important to note that we do not and cannot make any recommendations with regard to what your nutritional goals should be, nor do we make any particular recommendations as to what you should eat. We do provide for convenience, a widely used standard set of nutritional requirements as a starting point, and the software will compute to the best of its ability a set of foods which will meet whatever requirements you select. However, neither of these may suited to your needs as will be explained in the limitations below. In other words, you use the results provided by this web site at your own risk.
The software and data have a number of limitations which you should be aware of when using it.
Software limitations:
- The software does not know your genetics, allergies, or medical history and cannot take these things into account.
- The standard nutritional recommendations we provide are considered to be adequate for most people this means that for some people, the standard recommendations may not be sufficent. There is no way for us to know if this is a problem for you.
- Many nutrients do not have defined upper limits. This does NOT mean it is safe to eat as much as you like, it means that the upper limit is UNKNOWN. This is particularly true for infants and very small children, the research hasn't been done or can't be done safely.
- Sadly, software always has bugs and ours is no exception. While there are checks built into the code which are designed to detect problems with the results, we cannot guarantee that the results are correct.
- The software only determines what foods meet the requirements it is given, it does not make recommendations as to what you should eat.
- The software does not understand that no one should eat two kilograms of hot peppers or that even water in sufficiently large quantities can be lethal. If you give it an extreme set of requirements or a very limited food set, either of these results (and many other strange outcomes) are possible. It is assumed you are smart enough not to attempt to consume these results!
Data limitations:
- The nutrient database we use does not contain data for the following nutrients: chromium, iodine, biotin, boron, nickel, vanadium, and chloride. Because of this, these nutrients are not included in the standard nutritional requirements generated by the software, and the quantities of these nutrients in the results are unknown.
- Sulfate is not in the database, however, it is considered adequate if you receive the recommended levels of sulfur amino acids in the protein you consume. Sulfur amino acids are included in the requirements generated by the software.
- Fluoride is in the database, however, the number of foods with data on this nutrient are insufficient to be useful, so it is also excluded from the generated nutritional requirements.
- Vitamin D3 data in the database is also too limited, so the combined vitamin "D2 + D3" has been substituted for vitamin D3 nutritional targets.
- Water is in the database, however, since you can drink water independent of the water composition of foods, we do not include it in the standard nutritional requirements generated by the software.
- The nutrient composition of foods can vary considerably depending on both genetics and the conditions under which it is grown. If the soil it is grown in is deficient in certain nutrients, then the food is likely be deficient in those nutrients. Fertilizers, drought, excess rainfall, etc can also affect the relative composition of foods.
Food preparation can have a significant effect on the nutritional values. While the database provides nutrient information for different ways of preparing foods, if they don't match your methods, it may change the results.
- Boiling vegetables and discarding the water will lose nutrients leached from the vegetables and discarded with the water, however, if the vegetables are part of a stew, those nutrients will remain as part of your meal.
- Cooking can destroy some nutrients such as vitamin C, however, it can also release nutrients which your body might not otherwise be able to absorb. This is a function of a number of factors including the temperature and duration of cooking, if your cooking temperature and time are different than were used for processing foods in the database, you may not get the expected nutritional value.
- Grinding - seeds/grains contain many nutrients which in many cases are not accessible unless they are broken down by either cooking at high enough temperature or grinding.
Given all of the above, you may be asking why anyone would bother to use the software? The simple answer is that you cannot get adequate nutrition from the food you eat unless the nutrients are actually in it! Additionally, you may be doing a far worse job of choosing your diet than you realize. Despite its limitations this site can help you to improve your diet. I was rather surprized at the results when I first started using the earliest versions of the software. Despite the fact that I generally don't keep processed foods on hand and had what I thought was a reasonable mix of fruits, vegetables, grains and meats, when I gave the software a list of the foods in my apartment with standard nutritional requirements, the result required that I eat 2 kilograms (4.4 pounds) of carrots each day! Some nutrients were lacking in most of the foods, and carrots were the only food on hand which could fulfill that requirement. This is not really surprizing when you consider that we buy foods based on what we are used to, what we like to eat, price and to some extent what we consider to be nutritious, however, if all the foods that meet these requirements are deficient in the same nutrient(s), then our diet will be deficient as well. Ultimately I did not eat the 2 kilograms of carrots, instead I changed my grocery shopping, though I do now eat 200 grams of carrots each day which is a lot more than I used to :-)