Your food log lists all the foods you have eaten on any day. The day you are viewing will be highlighted in red on the calendar, and also shown at the top of the page.

Days on the calendar are also coded to help you quickly understand your logging history:

• Days where you have not made any food entries are shown in plain text.
• Days that are bold and blue include some entries, but not enough to be included in daily average calculations.
• Days that are bold and green have enough entries to be included in daily averages.

The Food Log

Food log listings are separated as breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. To add a food to any meal, just click the corresponding Add Food to Log button.

Adding Foods

When you click the Add Food to Log button you will be taken to a simple form that lets you search the database. You can begin typing immediately in the Search box, or you can first narrow your search by selecting a food group or subcategory. (For information on the Search Type menu, see our Advanced Logging tutorial.)

As soon as you begin typing in the Search box, you should begin to see your search results in the form below. Continue typing to narrow your search. If you receive a message that no results match your search, try widening your search with less restrictive search terms ("egg" instead of "eggs," for example).

If the food you need is unavailable in our database, we've made it easy for you to add. Click here to learn how.

When you find the food you want, select it by clicking on the small round button beside the food name. Nutritional details for the food will appear below. Note also that some foods in the search results are highlighted. This is for easy recognition of foods you have previously added to your logs.

Use the form beside the nutrition label to change the quantity of the food and to add it to your log. Mark the Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, or Snacks buttons to change the entry to a different meal of the day.

You can perform multiple searches without reloading the page, and add as many foods at a time as you like. The foods will appear in the Added To Log column, and you can select any of them to edit or delete.

When you have finished adding foods, click the View Log button to return to the food log.

The Food Log, Again

Back at the food log, you will see that all of the new foods have been added and are now displayed in a format that shows caloric and nutritional details in an easy-to-understand format. In the Meal Total row the numbers are added to show the values for the entire meal. Numbers are highlighted in red or green to indicate whether your daily totals for a nutrient have met or exceeded your recommended dietary allowance.

If you realize you have made an error in a food entry, you can easily correct it. Just click the food name and you'll be taken to a form that lets you edit the quantity, move the food to a different meal, or delete it.

Daily Total

The summary row near the bottom of the log adds your totals from every meal. In the example below from a partially completed day, you can see that the user is within the recommended allowance for fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium; he has eaten more than enough Vitamin A; but he should find foods that provide fiber, vitamin C, calcium, and iron.

Keep in mind that the nutritional recommendations do not need to be reached every single day ... highs and lows (reds and greens) are okay on any given day, as long as the average over time stays within suggested ranges. (The most recent two-week averages are always available on the My Home page.)

Adding New Foods to the Database

As you begin to use the system, you will likely come across packaged or restaurant foods that are not yet included in our database. Fortunately, in most cases this is an easy fix. The packaged foods that you buy in the store will come with a nutrition facts label that supplies the information you need. Use the New Foods page (look for it in the drop-down menu under Foods) to transfer this information from the food to the database.

After entering the food name, select a catgory and subcategory for the food. Then fill out the form as completely as possible using the information from the label. (Restaurants often supply this information on their web sites if there is no packaging with the food.) If the label is incomplete for certain nutrients, leave the field blank.

Our form also includes additional nutrients that are volunteered by some food labels. If this information is available, go ahead and enter it. Otherwise just leave this part of the form blank. Be careful here, though: some labels report this information at %, while others use mg, g, or µg, depending on the nutrient. Make sure you've selected the correct unit of measure.

When all the information is added, click the Submit button and double-check your entries on the next page. If everything is correct, the item is now available for you to add to your food log.