Hidden-nutrient hack (useful for iodine)

Lin

I've been on Cronometer long enough to lose 30 pounds and gain fitness and balance my diet. Thanks, Cronometer and the friendly informative staff who answer questions so promptly!
One thing that has bothered me is that nutrition information is not always complete (mostly not Cronometer's fault). Lately I have come to understand the vital importance of iodine in one's diet, after finally starting to pay attention to the nutrient balance scales at the bottom of Cron Gold. I became worried I was chronically deficient in iodine until I went online and looked up the iodine contents in foods and found out that I was getting a very good amount from what I was eating.

This may have already been discussed in this forum (I haven't seen it) but here's my ridiculousy easy nutrient hack for iodine (which can be adapted for other nutrients as well):

1. Look up the iodine content of frequently-eaten foods.
2. Set up a custom food in Cronometer for each food, call it "Iodine in 1 [cup or ounce - or gram or whatever you use] of [that food]" and enter only the amount of iodine in that food for that measurement.
3. Every time you eat the food, after entering that food in the diary call up "iodine" in the search box and it will pull up all the iodine foods you have customized. Choose the one with that food, adjust the measurement to the size of your portion, and voila - you now get credit for Iodine in your diary.

bracconiere

actually better would be to select the food, you researched yourself..if your happy with your number right click to edit the food then on the food page click the gear at the top right, and then select edit a copy.... that way you don't have to enter a bunch of extra stuff, just remember to select your edited copy when selecting from foods...

Lin

Wow! I didn't think you could do that with pre-set foods. Thanks, bracconiere!

Here's the amusing part of all this: the reason I came up with the workaround in the first place is that the official Morton's Iodized Salt in the database - which even had the registered trademark symbol - had a blank for iodine. Obviously, the only reason I would buy iodized salt is for the iodine. Now I can use the copy I made that actually does include the iodine, as long as I remember to use the copy and not the original.

Also, future people reading these posts will gain a new skill. Good all around.

bracconiere

Pretty sure like eating your vegetables, when your selecting foods from the list look for the brightly colored ones! lol, glad i could help...

sstadler

How do you view the amount of iodine in a daily diary?

Hilary

@Lin I see there is a listing in our database for Morton, All-purpose Iodized Sea Salt (Food #2274459) that contains Iodine in its listing! I would also recommend using NCCDB generic entries wherever possible to obtai the most complete data available. Check out this blog post to learn more about choosing the best data sources for your needs https://cronometer.com/blog/6-tips-getting-nutrition-data/

@sstadler Some nutrients are not visible by default as they are not generally available from our nutrition data sources. Since there is very little data for these nutrients in our database, your tracked values may be significantly lower than they actually are.
However, if you still wish to track them, settings can be changed by following these steps:
1) Select the 'Profile' Tab
2) In the 'Nutrient Targets' section, and find the nutrient
3) Select the ''Visible'' check box next to the nutrient