Perfect Diets? Idea for a service?
Are there a list of perfect chronometer diets out there?
I'm surprised this isn't mentioned more frequently I've been searching for the answer a couple of times or why there isn't a service for it (or if there is I'm unaware of it).
Ideally you can give a bot your favorite foods as well as some foods that you can't stand and based off of that it will auto generate diets around maintenance calories that hit all of your goals.
Ideally I'd like to have 2-3 different diets I kind of swap around but for me personally to get all my micronutrients in a way that I actually like most of the food I have to eat almost the same thing. Wonder if anyone has a list of diets anywhere.
Comments
That would be a great feature Huggles. Thanks for the suggestion!
Karen Stark
cronometer.com
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I read in a recent newsletter from Tufts University School of Nutrition that only 2 per cent of the population eat an ideal healthy diet. My diet has improved significantly since I started using Cronometer two years ago. It's tough to get to an ideal diet, but mine is often above 90% of targets
@Huggles You can prepare a few custom recipes, e.g. Egg day, Chocolate day, Nut day, Fish day --- each with 100 % of nutrients. Then each day just select one of those and explode it into the diary.
100 % All Targets Day @ Chocolate:
I like pizza and ice cream. How many of each should I eat to satisfy my nutritional goals and not feel hungry?
/s
Cronometer Gold already has a "Foods suggestion" feature. There are various services that recommend diets, some even based on DNA samples (which don't have much research behind them). One that does make sense and I used, is InsideTracker. They recommend foods to balance your micronutrient deficiencies based on blood analytics. I reviewed InsideTracker back in 2014. They're very much still in business.
Is this feature really feasible? Here are my objections:
1. Although Cronometer tracks fiber, vitamins, and minerals, it doesn't track all beneficial nutrients. Probiotics and phytonutrients fly below the radar. Then there are the nutrients that aren't known and may not be discovered for centuries.
2. Cronometer doesn't distinguish between refined sugars and the natural sugars in fruits and vegetables. You can get sugar from healthy superfoods and from the worst of the worst junk foods. If you treat nutrition as a pure numbers game, a gram of sugar from the high fructose corn syrup in Dr. Pepper is no worse than a gram of sugar from actual berries.
3. Cronometer doesn't distinguish between good fats and bad fats. You can get Omega 3s, Omega 6s, monounsaturated fats, and saturated fats from healthy foods, and you can get all these fats from the worst of the worst junk foods. There's a big difference between getting your fats from nuts and seeds vs. getting your fats from pro-inflammatory vegetable seed oil. Cronometer also doesn't show just how terrible deep-fried food is for your health. The oil in the deep fryers in restaurant kitchens is typically used MULTIPLE times before it gets replaced. Each iteration of deep frying generates trans fats, carcinogens, and oxidation products.
4. Cronometer doesn't tell you how varied your diet is. You should eat a variety of different fruits and vegetables and include the whole rainbow of colors. Cronometer is completely oblivious to this.
I use Cronometer for very sporadic spot checks of my diet. I'm more interested in my fiber, vitamin, and mineral intake than caloric intake. Cronometer can help for making slight adjustments to one's diet, but it should NOT dictate everything.