What to eat?

August 17, 2011 11:35 AM

I'm eating a certain number of calories per day and using My Fitness Pal to track my food. If, for example, I have most of my day's menu planned but have a certain number of calories, fat grams, protein grams, and carb grams I need to eat to meet my daily targets, is there a website that will tell me which foods fit those criteria? Like a calorie database in reverse, I guess. Does that exist?
posted by trillian to Food & Drink (9 answers total)

You might want to look into how people approach the Zone Diet -- in particular, the whole Crossfit community uses a block system and breaks down various foods into blocks that fall into each of the fat, protein, carb categories. I am not advocating the Zone (I find that the insane amount of micromanaging destroys the fun of eating), but it sounds similar to what you are looking for.

So, here is a link to a Crossfit article showing how it all works. In that article is a big chart of foods and how they fit that system.

From there, I bet you can find either a website or a smartphone app that is made to use that Zone/Block system.
posted by This_Will_Be_Good at 12:10 PM on August 17, 2011 [1 favorite]

Fitday, but they are kind of heavy on packaged foods.
posted by Ideefixe at 12:28 PM on August 17, 2011

You might find swole.me useful.
posted by Earl the Polliwog at 12:52 PM on August 17, 2011 [4 favorites]

Caloriecount come very close to doing what you describe. You would need to log all your food each day using their tools to be able to view their analysis of your nutrition (nutrients, carbs, protein, fats, etc) and alerts you to what's missing in your diet. A drop down menu in any section will tell you how far off you are then you can click on "foods that provide this nutrient" (something to that effect) and go from there. Other than how tedious it is to log everything, Caloriecount can be very useful.
posted by marimeko at 1:30 PM on August 17, 2011

Unless it's in a super-secret, hidden location on their website, Fitday does not do what Trillian is looking to do.
posted by coolguymichael at 2:05 PM on August 17, 2011

Most people only eat a relatively small range of foods and meals. It would be pretty easy, now that you've been tracking for a while, to construct your own database of foods you eat and their calories - even just in excel, and then sort by calorie count.
posted by lollusc at 4:45 PM on August 17, 2011

2nding swole.me. It does exactly this.
posted by beepbeepboopboop at 10:04 PM on August 17, 2011

Best answer: Not precisely what you're wanting, but it might be helpful too: nutritiondata.gov's search and filter functions, where you tell it you want to see the foods with the most protein per calorie and fewest carbs or whatever. I find it really helpful when while food tracking I notice I'm not hitting certain targets and want to densely/within calorie limits.
posted by ifjuly at 10:24 AM on August 18, 2011 [3 favorites]

CGM--Fitday does have a food section--you have to create an account, and then you create your journal, etc. The free membership works fine. You can customize the food entries to whatever you like--coffee with 3 tea spoons of sugar or whatever.
posted by Ideefixe at 2:40 PM on August 18, 2011