always having the ml / mL option for drinks; alcohol; alternate spellings of foods

judoman_09

1. when i go to enter a drink I have discovered that some don't let me enter the volume in mL / ml (millilitre) ... instead Cronometer forces me to have to convert to 'fluid ounces' or 'oz', which is inconvenient as it is never on our labels, nor in common usage here in Australia. An example is a beer (eg. Guinness, beer, stout)

2. for that matter, perhaps it would be easy to make 'alcohol' as one of the food categories on the top?

3. is it possible to update the database with different ways of describing alcohol, rather than 'proof' or whatever? Down under we use percentage of alcohol by volume.
   (https://www.foodstandards.gov.au/code/userguide/Documents/Guide to Labelling of Alcoholic Beverages.pdf)

4. Yoghurt vs Yogurt -- can you make it so both spellings bring up the same list of foods? I wonder if there are other foods in the database with alternate spellings ...?

Hilary

Hello @judoman_09 ,
Sorry for the delay in response! This one must have got a bit buried in our busy forum!
1. For Beverages and items measured by volume, we use the serving size indicated on the label. Because Volume is not directly correlated to weight, we are unable to give a gram amount in these cases. I would in general recommend using weight as a servign size for reasons outlined in detail here: https://cronometer.com/blog/6-tips-getting-nutrition-data/. If you would like to keep using the volumetric serving size but switch it to metric, I would recommend saving a custom copy of your food and adding the more convenient serving size. You can use the convention 1 fl oz = ~30 mL and 1oz = ~28g
2. Thanks for the suggestion of making alcohol a category. At this time we will retain our original categories, however we will keep your suggestion in mind! To further simplify your searches, I would recommend marking favourites and then searching in your favourites tab! You can learn more about marking favourites here: https://cronometer.com/help/diary/#foods
3. We use data from the USDA and NCCDB both of which are databases based in the US. We will keep this in mind for future updates however! To double check you are using the correct data, I would recommend reviewing the amount of Alcohol (g) listed in the serving size and converting that to the percentage of alcohol listed on your label. To do this, divide the weight of alcohol (g) by the serving size (mL) and then divide that by ~0.8 (The conversion factor for alcohol) Multiply the answer by 100 to get the alcohol percentage in the listing which you can then compare to your product's alcohol percentage that is listed on the label.
4. This is something I struggle with as well! There are so many spellings for yogourt! (Yoghurt, Youghurt, Yogurt, Yogourt, etc). Try just entering the first three letters when you search, and you will get a much broader search result, hopefully encompassing all spelling options!

TheRegents

I had the same problem with converting alcohol % by volume to g. In the end it was just too complicated so I gave up drinking alcohol

Edit: to see how complicated it really is (although in truth the formula given by @Hilary is obviously good enough for diet ) have a look at this document about alcoholometry (yeah it even has its own name!) http://www.itecref.com/pdf/OIML_Alcoholometric_Tables.pdf

judoman_09

thanks, very nice answers, I appreciate the input from both of you :-)

SageMyst

Why isn't there a choice of milliliters. Cronometer has grams, why not metric liquid measurements. It can't be that hard to add.