Cronometer Users: Advice?

jaiswalkhan

Hello,

I've been using cronometer.com for quite a while. There are some things that frustrate me and I'm wondering if anyone else has figured out a workaround.

[1] First of all, I eat oats a lot! I would like to track oats properly, nutrition-wise. When I go to nutritiondata.self.com and look up rolled oats, I see a profile that includes B vitamins and lots of minerals. When I add rolled oats in cronometer, none of the options provide me with the values for these nutrients because it only includes what is on the label which is not a complete label.

[2] I also have a weird problem with lentils. My bag of dried lentils says: 1/4cup (35g) is 80 calories. But the cronometer.com entry for "lentils, raw" shows 35g of lentils as being 120calories, and 1/4cup is higher at 169 calories. Red lentils show similar numbers. What is wrong? What is the actual calorie content of lentils by weight?

bracconiere

as far as 1 goes. are you eating fortified or regular oats? not sure if that would explain it or not. you'd have to look at the ingredients and see if a bunch of vitamins are listed or not. Rolled oats for me shows b vit's and minerals, not the brand specific though. and if you do find a better listing for your particular brand there is the option to create a custom food...I've had to dig up info like that myself, like i had to google vital wheat gluten till i came across a dog food company that listed the amino acid breakdown and i just made a custom food with that info...

and 2, good observation, never noticed that myself! lol, I've always just used the USDA data for them, seems to work? out of curiosity i just weighed a 1/4 cup of dry lentils, and it weighs 47g's. which is what the USDA says not the package...package says 35, so i'd trust the db more i guess. strange i just noticed that the info for lentils has changed since the SR26...they say they have ALOT less fiber and phosphorus now...

thanks for bringing that up i'll have to dig and find out whats right and wrong now, good times! that's why i started posting here! bring the fun of research i had in the beginning 9 years ago...

bracconiere

just checked nutritiondata for lentils, and their still using the old version of the db, probably sr24-26...it's up to 28 now i believe...

hopefully someone will chime in and answer your question! I've been a big help, haven't i

just remember CRON-O-Meter is digital science, both food and you are analog...

tcolvinOH

There was another post I was reading in the last day or so that mentioned the most accurate form of measurement and said that weight is probably the most accurate, as measuring out cups of certain items can lend itself to subjectivity. I think spinach was the example, whereas measuring the weight of an item might give a more accurate account of the amount. if it were me, i think I would lean toward whatever is the most accurate without subjectivity, which is probably going to be weight. This would be outside of how Im used to thinking about things like cups and ounces, but is definitely a more accurate view, scientifically.

I like @bracconiere 's comment about food and you(us) being analog. One of the cool tools that we as humans have is the ability to bridge the gap between the data and how it is used. Analysis. Also one of the reasons I started commenting is to pick up tidbits like this.

One of the things I like most about Cronometer is that someone is verifying the food data. While I would tend to generally rely on that, anytime there's a discrepancy, its always worth noting.

Hilary

The best data you will find will come from our NCCDB and USDA Sources. These sources have tested foods in Laboratories or gathered information from credible sources to determine complete nutrient profiles. We keep our data updated to the latest dataset released and are currently using USDAsr28.
I would recommend using:
Food #464877: "Oatmeal, Regular or Quick, Dry"
Food #2086: "Lentils, Pink or Red, Raw"

bracconiere

i would mention, that I've noticed a HUGE discrepancy between USDA and frozen food labels....on label for frozen carrots or kale, they list it as having not much vit a...but i even sent a email to a nutritionist about it and they told me that the db was probably safe to go by and they were playing it safe....

TheRegents

Perhaps the food manufacturers are playing it safe as well as factoring in a reduction in vitamin A due to freezing -- or, just as likely, how the vegetables are handled before freezing. Rickman, Bruhn and Barret (2007) for example reported a reduction in carotenoids of between 5% and 48% after blanching and freezing (I imagine blanching is pretty standard practice before freezing and packaging); a reduction of 22-48% for broccoli, and 10-36% for carrots. It's unclear from that particular paper whether the reduction in carotenoids was due to the blanching, freezing or both though.

Rickman, J., Bruhn, C., & Barrett, D. (2007). Nutritional comparison of fresh, frozen, and canned fruits and vegetables II. Vitamin A and carotenoids, vitamin E, minerals and fiber. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture., 87(7), 1185-1196.

Edit: most frozen vegetables I purchase have also been sliced and that would affect things as well (exposure to light and air). If I have time tomorrow I might look into this more, it's pretty interesting. I do think the nutritionist might be right though and that the manufacturers are playing it safe and erring on the lower side of however they're estimating nutrient content (or if they're doing actual analysis of the foods reporting the lower end of the values; I don't know the laws regarding that but it's probably ok to under-report )

bracconiere

@TheRegents thanks for the info, i'll try and find, read those in the near future...i just find it hard to believe that a bag of frozen sweet potatoes, or carrots only has like 10-20% my daily value for vit A....maybe their trying to sell more also...lol