By Tisha Dotson
No matter what you hear, food isn’t the enemy. It’s the way we abuse it, from spraying it with chemicals to overeating, from choosing the wrong types of foods to eat everyday to creating recipes that don’t mesh quite right. To help you straighten everything out, whether it’s for medical or weight loss diets or just to learn more about nutrients and explore new flavors, we’ve put together a list of 50 amazing food tools on the web.
Diet Trackers and Tools
These tools will keep you on track of your diet and include diaries, calculators and quizzes.
- StartYourDiet Tools: Members (it’s free to sign up) get access to diet tools including a meal tracker, meal intake chart, favorite foods list, and a database of nutrition information for over 20,000 foods.
- MyPyramid Tracker: This tool from the USDA helps you assess nutrition and food intake so that you can better understand where your calories come from and how your body uses them.
- The Daily Plate: Use the food tools on this website to set calorie goals and learn about the nutrients and vitamins in nearly 680,000 different foods.
- Diet Profile Quiz: Take this quiz to find out your relationship to food: are you an emotional eater or functional eater?
- My Food Diary: Fatsecret’s food diary doesn’t even make you register to start with a simple journal. Add items for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks, and it even lets you copy previous entries for repeat meals.
- iVillage Health Calculators: The calculators listed here will help you figure out daily requirements for protein, carbohydrates, fat, calcium, iron and calories.
- Low-Carb Diet Tools: These tools will help you limit certain types of carbohydrates and learn about carbohydrates in different food groups. You can also search for food items to look up carb content.
- my-calorie-counter.com: Access an online diet journal with calorie counting capability here.
- Food Search and Calorie Chart: This chart is organized by "recently eaten" foods, tags and newly added foods, and currently includes over 460,000 entries.
- Livestrong: Livestrong.com’s Daily Plate app is designed to help you set and reach calorie goals and record how certain foods make you feel. You can search for foods and track calories, too.
- Recipe Remix: This fun tool reworks portion sizes and ingredients to make the meals you already like to cook healthier.
- Free Foods List: These lists of sugar-free, low-sugar and fat-free or reduced-fat foods are safe for diabetics and those on a strict diet.
Nutrition
Learn more about nutrition and your own needs from these tools.
- Nutrient Search Tool: Qualify your search so that you’re only finding foods that are high in the nutrients you want.
- Nutrition Analysis Tool 2.0: Enter your age and gender, and then food names to create your personal diet list. Then, you’ll find out which nutrients you’re still lacking.
- Recipe Nutrition Calculator: Quickly calculate calories, carbs, fat and protein per serving when you add ingredients or recipes.
- Healthy Eating Plan Calculator: This tool helps parents figure out what foods are best for their kids, and provides information on popular family and kid-favorite dishes like roast beef, french fries, fried chicken tenders, ice cream and pancake syrup.
- Analyze My Plate: Choose different foods for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and find out if you’re getting all the vitamins you need.
- Compare Foods: Compare foods in this large database so that you can make better choices with snacking, cooking and even eating out.
- Nutrition Facts: An interactive guide to food labels: This tool from the Mayo Clinic displays a nutrition facts label for crackers, and as you mouse over different sections, explains nutrients, calories, and recommended amounts for each.
- Calcium Assessment: Find out how much you know — and how much you really need — from this calcium test.
- MyFood-a-pedia: Look up food information and compare foods here.
- Nutrition Calculators: These calculators from the West Virginia Diabetic Association explain nutrient needs for men and women.
Recipes
Here you will find recipe tools to organize your weekly menus, try new foods, and make use of what you already have.
- Pantry: This tool encourages you to keep your pantry stocked of healthy basics and will help you organize your food shopping, too.
- Interactive Menu Planner: The National Heart Lung and Blood Institute has put together this planner which allows you to control calories while mixing and matching different foods from the pyramid.
- Proper Portion Sizes: This reference tool explains proper portion sizes for all of the food groups.
- Daily Meal Planner: Add, drag and drop meals on a calendar with this tool.
- MyPyramid Menu Planner: Here’s another meal planner that is designed by the USDA to help you create meals that match the food pyramid’s guidelines.
- Cookstr: Find recipes by holiday/occasion, cuisine, main ingredients or specific food. You can also search by celebrity chef, no matter what channel or company they’re affiliated with.
- My Recipe Book: RealAge lets you search for recipes and then save them in your own "book" here.
- My Recipe File: Use this tool to store recipes that you find online and your own favorite ones you choose to upload. The tool also lets you organize menus and shopping lists.
- wegottaeat: Here you can create recipe "cards" online while networking, tagging foods and recipes, and bookmarking others’ great ideas.
- Seasonal Ingredient Map: Find out which foods are in season in different parts of the country. Click on states or a month to learn more, and when you click on the food, you’ll be directed to recipes.
Cook’s Tools
From reference charts to food safety, find cook’s tools here.
- Conversions and Equivalents: This chart displays metric and temperature equivalents, just to start.
- The Cook’s Thesaurus: Use this cooking encyclopedia to learn more about ingredients, substitutions, and cooking terms.
- Cooking School: Kraft’s cooking school features a salad center, pasta center, step-by-step recipes, cooking videos, herb guide and more resources to help you perfect your skills.
- Can You Serve Up a Safe Barbecue?: Learn about food safety in this game that asks you to prepare potato salad, iced tea, homemade coleslaw, BBQ chicken and hamburgers.
- Ingredient Substitution Tool: Discover when it’s best to use pesto, cream cheese, white wine or chicken broth.
- Cooking School: Martha Stewart’s cooking lessons and quizzes can be referenced here.
- My Very Own Pizza: Make your own virtual pizza and learn about healthy substitutes and additions here.
- Meat Temperatures Chart: This chart explains USDA guidelines and professional kitchen rules for cooking different types of meat.
- How to Cook: You’ll find references for cooking seafood, fruit, preserves, diary, vegetables and more.
- Equipment glossary: Browse Betty Crocker’s equipment glossary to find definitions and photos of common kitchen equipment.
Food Shopping
Streamline your food shopping with these great tools.
- Shopping List: Combine recipes from Epicurious.com and then print a shopping list for the listed ingredients.
- UCook Create a Shopping List: Create your own shopping list by selecting a department, then an aisle, and then either a category or actual food item to ad.
- Interactive shopping list: ChefMom.com’s tool lets you create a list online that you can print or view in the store. There’s a space for notes too.
Beverages
Whether you’re brewing your own beer or trying to pair wines with food, here are more amazing foodie tools.
- BeerTools Recipe Tools: These tools help you put together beer brewing recipes and also calculate your brew house efficiency.
- The Bar: Search for cocktail recipes by occasion, brand, or type. You’ll also find videos, a drink glossary and other tools.
- Brewer’s Lair Calculators: Find calculators for evaporation rate, hop utilization, batch size and a lot more.
- Wine Pairing Tool: Kroger’s wine pairing tool asks you to choose your main dish and the main spice, and then the wine selector recommends three pairings: good, better best.
- Mixilator: Choose to randomly generate or ask for a certain kind of cocktail with this tool. If you come across an ingredient you’ve never heard of, click on it, and you’ll get a definition and list of substitutions.