CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Diet watchers now can go to the World Wide Web to analyze
what they eat. The Nutrition Analysis Tool (NAT), developed in the University
of Illinois hospitality management program, lets users analyze the nutrients
in more than 5,200 common food items based on daily allowance data of the
U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Researchers are working to add an energy calculator to the program for use
by high school athletes at risk for anorexia and bulimia.
"NAT is a free program that allows anyone to analyze the food they
eat," said former program staff member Christopher Hewes, now the assistant
director of the U. of I. Agricultural Instructional Media Laboratory. "You
fill out a brief personal profile, enter the foods and the portions you
eat, then NAT quickly analyzes the food. There is nothing in it that says,
'Hey, you are not eating well,' but it lets you see if the fat content is
high, for example, and it can provide you with alternative, healthier foods."
Public access of the tool has quadrupled to more than 250 people a day since
it was put on the Web (at http://spectre.ag.uiuc.edu/~food-lab/nat/), Hewes
said. NAT is being used in some U. of I. nutrition courses and a campus
cafeteria. It also is being used in the Milford, Ill., schools to help educate
young students about proper nutrition.
This fall, the U. of I. will work in the Champaign and Urbana high schools
thanks to a Partnership Illinois grant targeting students in sports such
as gymnastics, cross country and wrestling who are often prone to anorexia
(loss of appetite) and bulimia (binge eating). The idea, said NAT co-developer
Jim Painter, is to help at-risk athletes to balance their diet with the
energy they burn during workouts. Painter will work with Jim Misner, a professor
of kinesiology, on the project. (Partnership Illinois is an initiative to
highlight and strengthen U. of I. outreach to the state.)
"Anorexia has been a difficult problem to handle," said Painter,
a certified dietitian and doctoral student who manages the Spice Box, a
cafeteria operated by seniors in the U. of I. department of food science
and human nutrition. "You've got kids who just keep losing weight.
No one has come up with a good approach with them. If we can channel their
energy and give them a tool that lets them see what they are eating and
how it relates to their energy levels, maybe they will be able to make better
decisions about their nutrition."
Painter will speak about his use of NAT with the elderly during the American
Society on Aging annual meeting in Nashville, Tenn., March 21-26. Preliminary
findings of research for his doctoral dissertation show that many senior
citizens often miss the mark substantially in estimating the amount of nutrients
they think they are getting in the foods they eat.
NAT is evolving, Painter and Hewes said. Eventually, they added, more items
will be available for analysis, such as the fast foods many teenagers devour
and many adults eat on the run.