RecipeNutrition.com was established to provide a new level of
support for families and individuals who want to 'do something' to improve
their overall nutrition.
This Site was founded on four basic
premises;
- Although nutrition is a complex subject involving chemical and
physiological reactions to foods, the composition of every food can be
effectively described by its components of protein, carbohydrates and
fat. These three components combine to yield the calorie content or
energy for that food.
- The successful diet plans today rely on varying our percentage intake of these three basic
food components; protein, carbohydrates and fat .
- RecipeNutrition.com can achieve exceptional
accuracy in our food nutrition calculations by using the USDA Nutrient Database
for Standard Reference for all it's nutrition calculations. This database is
maintained by the United States Department of Agriculture, the world's
leading authority on nutrition.
- Internet technology has now advanced to the point that we can build a
new generation of sites that can achieve far more sophisticated goals
than previously possible.
RecipeNutrition.com is the
first of this next generation Internet site. RecipeNutrition.com is based
on a convergence of new technologies that at
a fundamental level "make it easier to find things" using a computer. We
use a new user interface paradigm that we call a "context sensitive,
just-in-time decision tree". The best example of this is our "ingredient
finder" with it's cascading ingredient selection boxes. Our ingredient locator
strategy incorporates sophisticated anthropological sorting techniques. The goal we strive for is to
no less than changing the way we feed ourselves.
The heart of our "better way to eat" is the NutritionPlan.
This is a one week plan of meals that will be consumed. This one week
cycle makes it convenient to modify the nutrition habits of the users.
The process of
feeding a family or individual is both an art and a science. It combines
the psychology of what we want to eat with the realities of what we should
eat and can afford to eat. Inevitably this leads to the purchase of
foodstuffs. We must then process these foodstuffs to some degree for final
consumption.
The variables that we have to work with are;
- Food preferences.
- Health considerations.
- Cost of food.
- Time available.
- Preparation complexity.
RecipeNutrition.com helps the food
preparation artist / engineer on every one of these steps.
1. Food preferences. All of our recipes are classified through
our recipe decision tree. This gives us a lot of information about the
recipes to match the preferences of the user. In addition we have a system of
key words or descriptors that add a further level of detail about the
recipe. The user can save recipes into their own recipe box and build up a
useful sub-set of recipes for their NutritionPlan.
2. Health Considerations.
RecipeNutrition.com guides the nutrition habits of the users by providing
useful comparisons between the user's NutritionPlan and other eating
scenarios. For example, the user can compare their NutritionPlan to well known
prepared foods such as restaurant food and frozen entrees. In addition the
user can compare the basic nutritional components of their NutritionPlan to
successful nutrition plans such as 'atkins' and 'the zone'.
3. Cost of food. At RecipeNutrition.com we like to think that we
are focused on the practical application of technology to achieve good
things. Our NutritionPlanner helps our users to be more efficient and drives down
the total expenditures on food in the household. We do this by helping
the household cut down on prepared foods, a natural by-product of
nutrition planning, and in the future by partnering with food retailers to provide
direct links to the grocery market.
Another by-product of our NutritionPlan is the 'grocery list'.
The RecipeNutrition grocery list is the vital link to the
food purveyor. We use several specialized concepts to produce a truly
useful and revolutionary 'grocery list'. Our 'grocery list' is the matrix
of the 'NutritionPlan', our 'pantry' home inventory system and our integrated 'ingredient rollup' technology.
When our users complete our 'smart shopper' wizard,
we can provide information
to our food industry partners as to the purchasing strategies of our users
for any foodstuff. General strategies such as 'just best price' or
'highest quality' can be used to provide the user with the 'most probable'
choices for their 'grocery list'.
The 'pantry' home inventory system is a simple
interface that makes 'ingredient roll-up' on the
'grocery list' more useful. To activate the 'pantry' inventory system the
user classifies the most often used ingredients into their pantry.
Ingredients that are used in a recipe that come from the user's 'pantry'
are not directly included in the grocery list from the recipes. Instead
common ingredients like salt are managed at the time of shopping list
creation. Other common household needs such as pet foods, paper and
cleaning supplies are also efficiently handled by the pantry system.
Integrated 'ingredient rollup' makes use of direct links to the grocery
supplier to 'roll-up' ingredients into logical package amounts. This is a
vital link which can be enhanced to provide a wealth of information to the
user as to food specials that tie in to the user's grocery list. Think of
this as a personalized 'grocery flyer'.
4. Time Available The RecipeNutrition.com
system of NutritionPlanning manages the time constraints of our users by
giving them the ability to search for recipes based on the time required
to prepare and serve them. In addition the integrated NutritionPlanning
approach saves shopping time by producing a smart list which can in the
final stage be delivered directly to the user by the grocer.
5. Preparation Complexity
The user is guided through the complexities of NutritionPlanning by using
search parameters that match their needs. Our keyword system provides
general categories such as 'quick and easy' while all recipes are
classified by prep, cook and service time.
At the end of the
day the 'nutrition aware' recipe database, user nutrition profiles,
shopping preferences, 'NutritionPlan' and 'grocery list' provided
by RecipeNutrition.com give the user a revolutionary new way to manage
the household nutrition needs and save time and money on foodstuffs. In
this way RecipeNutrition.com hopes to achieve its goal of changing the way
we feed ourselves.
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