If you want you and your family to eat healthy and nutritious meals every day, it is essential to know what exactly is going into your food. That is made much easier with a nutrition calculator. This is an effective way of determining the makeup of each meal and how many vitamins and minerals you are getting. This is as simple as using an online nutrition calculator.
The best nutrition calculators we’ve found are:
If you search online for nutritional calculators, you will quickly find out that there are literally dozens of them available. However, not all of them effectively provide you with the accurate information that you want to know. Continue reading to learn more about the five best nutrition calculators available online today and how they can benefit you and your health.
Article Contents
How do I Calculate Nutritional Information?
Since you cannot always tell what it is in a particular food item simply by looking at it, nutritional information is necessary to know exactly what you are eating. The primary way to do this is by looking at the labels on each package of food. These nutrition labels detailed the number of calories, protein, carbohydrates, and fat in the food item in question.
The three macronutrients that humans need to be concerned about are:
- Protein
- Carbohydrates
- Fat
Generally speaking, everyone should be eating a proper balance of these three macronutrients in order to stay that they are consuming a balanced diet. To do that requires that you have the nutritional information necessary to make an informed decision.
Each person has different needs when it comes to the daily intake of macros in nutrition. Size, age, and fitness level are just a few of the components that go into determining how much is needed. Instead of manually tracking this by using nutritional labels, online calculators have become an effective way of taking care of this for you.
What Does a Nutrition Calculator Do?
Using an online nutrition calculator makes good sense. There are so many different features available that people can now track the nutritional content of the food they eat from wherever they happen to be. This means that people away from home can keep up with a healthy diet simply by inputting their meals into the calculator and interpreting the results.
Nutrition calculators also make it easy to track calorie and macronutrient intake no matter where you happen to be eating, be it at home or in a restaurant. This has made eating healthy a whole lot easier in the long run. Keeping track of your eating habits no longer requires a written log that you must carry around with you everywhere that you go.
The 5 Best Nutrition Calculators Online
Since there are so many different nutritional calculators online today, it might seem challenging to find the one that best suits your needs. You want to make sure that the one you choose is easy to use, provides relevant information, and is accurate. To help you with that, we have put together the following list of the five best nutrition calculators available online.
1. Precision Nutrition
If you are looking for a simple tool that allows you to track your daily nutritional intake, the Precision Nutrition calculator is going to serve you well. Using this calculator will allow you to keep track of the total calories contained in the food you eat each day. It also walks you through the macronutrients contained in your food, along with making recommendations about portion sizes.
You can begin using the Precision Nutrition calculator once you set up an online account. As soon as you do that, you will be asked to see some goals related to your nutritional objectives. This is your chance to start improving your diet and develop healthier eating habits.
There are five different goals that you can choose from when using the Precision Nutrition calculator. They are:
- To lose weight – Users of this calculator can input their weight loss goals and then receive a detailed program that includes foods to eat and portion sizes to consume. This will help individuals lose weight in a healthy and controlled manner.
- To build muscle – Many people want to build muscle but do not know how to go about it. Many of the foods that we eat can contribute to muscle growth. Precision Nutrition will help individuals find the right nutritional balance to achieve their goals.
- To increase athletic performance – A certain balance of macronutrients is required to boost athletic performance. This online calculator will determine what you need and help create a program that should help you perform even better in your next competition.
- To engage in body shaping – It seems as though everyone wants to re-shape their body in one way or another. What we eat has much to do with that. When you choose this as your goal, a program will be generated that helps you know what food to eat to achieve maximum results.
- To improve your overall health – This goes back to the adage that we are what we eat. So, if we want to be healthier, it often begins with our eating habits.
Once you have set the primary goal that you would like to work on, the online calculator will encourage you to see certain timelines that you would like to meet those objectives. You will enter your eating style preferences and how many meals you typically each every day to begin this process.
The calculator will then help you tweak your current habits and turn them into an eating pattern that will help you attain your desired goals. This also works by analyzing your current activity level to determine what changes need to be made.
The end result of using the Precision Nutrition calculator online is that you will be able to determine how many calories you are consuming daily. This will also show how to adjust your portion sizes to meet your macronutrient requirements better.
2. MyFitness Pal
This is another useful online calculator that effectively tracks the nutritional needs of every user. MyFitiness Pal makes this list because it has such a comprehensive food database that everyone can take advantage of. By accessing this list, you will be able to determine the caloric and macronutrient content of virtually any food that you are interested in knowing about.
This database can come in quite handy when you just are certain what to eat for a certain meal. There are so many different foods that you can access with MyFitness Pal that you will have the information that you need to make an informed and beneficial decision.
Simply setting up an account online with this program will allow you to start tracking the food that you eat every day. It is easy to input the information necessary. You are also to include the following information that is applicable to you so that you can save even more time and receive data that is directly applicable to you.
- Foods you frequently eat – Instead of having to input the same food items over and over again manually, this program allows you to create shortcuts that make it even easier to keep track of your daily nutritional intake.
- Recipes that you tend to enjoy – If you cook certain recipes more often than others, this program will allow you to enter them once and then just use them that next time you cook the same meal.
- Physical fitness activities that you participate in – You will be able to tell MyFitness Pal what activities you participate in to receive information related to how to maximize your performance based on the food you eat.
This particular calculator becomes even easier to use when you download it application for your smartphone. It is an easy-to-use interface that contains the same functions that you will find online. This makes it even more likely that you will stick with your program, even when you are on the go.
Since it is often difficult to remember everything that you need to know to make healthy eating decisions, MyFitness also uses a scanner within its app. When you are at the grocery store, you can just scan the food label to quickly learn all of the relevant nutrition information and how it will fit into the program that you are on.
3. Lose It!
You will find that Lose It! is a nutritional calculator similar to the previous one that we just discussed. It runs on a similar platform and has many of the same features while functioning just a bit differently. There are also a few additional features that Lose It! has that other calculators talked about this point do not.
- Easily add foods you are familiar with already – You can create an entry directly on the site that will automatically populate every time you eat that particular food item. This saves you the time of having to look up the nutritional information each time you eat it.
- Find restaurants and add their food – Adding food from a restaurant is made simply with Lose It! You can even search for restaurants in your area and find the one that is closest to you that has the food you are interested in having for a particular meal.
- Picture analysis – This is a creative and useful feature where you can take a picture of a particular food and upload it from your smartphone. The app will then attempt to piece together the nutritional information for you.
These three features add another dimension to tracking the nutritional content of the food that you are eating. That also means that this is a calculator that has more features than many of the others on this list. However, you might find that it lacks connectivity when compared to MyFitness Pal.
4. Very Well Fit
This is an app that provides users with a unique approach to the traditional nutritional calculator. Very Well Fit is designed to provide users with a range of recipes that are designed to promote healthy eating recipes. You can input your goals and tell the program what you like to eat, and it will then recommend certain recipes that are best suited to you.
You can also bring your own recipes to this site. You can type in your recipe, and then Very Well Fit will calculate all of the relevant nutrition information for you. This is why this tool is referred to by many as a recipe nutrition calculator.
You will quickly discover that this particular program is easier to use than the others we have mentioned. This makes it perfect for individuals who are not as familiar with applications and technology. The system is easy to master, and there is not a heavy learning curve involved to get the nutritional information that you seek.
One drawback to Very Well Fit is that it does not provide personalized information, nor does it help users set goals and then make nutritional recommendations. At the same time, there is no need to set up an online account or profile with this program, so that will be appealing to many individuals.
Using this calculator requires six simple steps:
- Recipe name – You can put it in the name so that you can download the information to your computer and have it readily accessible the next time you need it.
- Ingredients – You will be able to directly input all of the ingredients that go into any given recipe.
- Servings – Every recipe is different, so you can dictate the number of servings contained in the one that you are planning to make.
- Serving size – You are also able to adjust for the serving size if you would like.
- Analyze the recipe – Once you have put in all of the requested information, you just click on the analyze recipe button, and the information will come to you shortly.
- Take a look at the nutrition label that is generated – A nutrition label is also generated that you can print out and use as your custom label for virtually any recipe that you have.
That is really all there to it. While Very Well Fit may not have many of the features that other calculators do, it generates the very information you may be looking for. For example, you can input your own recipes, adjust the serving sizes, and figure out the exact nutritional composition of your meal.
5. Happy Forks
The final nutrition calculator on this list is Happy Forks. You will find that this one looks quite similar to both MyFitnessPal and Very Well Fit in terms of the features that are included. However, you will need to create a free online account in order to use this calculator.
Happy Forks can analyze recipes like the other calculators, but it also includes a food diary. This makes it ideal for individuals trying to reach a certain goal and need to keep track of what they are eating from one week to the next.
One thing that is missing from Happy Forks is that it does not track exercise. This would make it difficult to reach certain fitness goals, but it has all of the other features that people looking to monitor nutritional intake need. It does not have the advanced features that some might want, making this ideal for a user who is just wanting some basic information.
Are Macros Able to be Calculated for Homemade Food?
Using a nutrition calculator when you have a store bought item that contains a nutrition label. However, it becomes a bit more labor-intensive when you are cooking food at home based on an old family recipe. Thanks, it is possible to still calculate the macronutrients contained in homemade food.
To make it easy, you will want to use an online calculator. Take note of all the ingredients that go into making the recipe and include the serving size. The calculator will then analyze what you have made and churn out a nutritional label that you can actually save and have access to whenever you need it.
Wrap-Up
If you are serious about eating healthy, you will want to begin by using a nutritional calculator. This is made so simple now that there are some great ones available online. Download your favorite one and start using it today. You may find out some surprising things about the food you enjoy the most and perhaps learn to modify your diet as needed.
For more amazing nutrition products online to help you stay healthy, check out that article!
