Features

The personal profiling feature tells you exactly how many calories you need every day to lose, gain or maintain your ideal body weight. In addition to a numeric report, you can see a line graph that shows your totals for a week or four weeks, or for a quarter, six months or a year of weekly averages.

It won�t take long to notice that everything on the planet isn�t in the database, extensive though it is. For example, a friend brought me a whole-wheat-crusted, free-range chicken pot pie from the health food store where she works. It wasn�t in the database, so I used the program�s My Foods option to create the entry. It�s simple to use. You just enter the fat, carbs, calories, protein, and fiber information from the product�s �Nutrition Facts� panel. Save it with a name you can remember, and when you need it again you can load it in one click.

You can also customize entries for things you assemble yourself, like sandwiches, from a variety of component foods that are in the database. Indeed, if you often have the same courses in a meal or snack, you can save a custom entry for the entire meal. I saved a �basic sandwich� entry for which I chose two slices of bread and some mustard. When needed, I can call it up and add the cold cuts du jour, or delete one of the slices of bread if I�m having only half a sandwich for a diabetic�s-special snack.

The Handheld Diet Diary includes a CKSync feature, which exports food and exercise data from the handheld to CalorieKing.com, where users can benefit from an extensive food library, recipe database, meal plans, live dietician meetings, and a community of fellow dieters. You know what they say about misery and company.

Problems

The Diary isn�t without minor annoyances. The search, for example, is quite fast at locating foods to add to your meals � it�s quicker, in fact, than simply browsing for them by name � but it won�t find anything you can�t spell. To test, I put in �bananna� (double n�s at the end, a common misspelling) and it came up blank.

Otherwise, the program�s search is thorough and friendly. It honors partial words (without wild card characters), like �bana�, which locates literally anything with �banana� in the name - like banana nut bread (yum!), even Subway sandwiches with banana peppers as a condiment, no kidding.

Simple browsing isn�t so simple. The arrangement of foods in the database isn�t alphabetical by the food�s name, but according to what food group the item is in, with multifarious subgroups for different types of the food. Take bananas, again. You find them in �fruits, fresh, Banana, edible portion,� not simply �bananas.�

Even so, you aren�t likely to need many fresh fruits and vegetables that aren�t in the huge database. It includes a mind-boggling variety, like Cherimoya, a California specialty that I�ve never heard of or seen one of that I remember, and fresh Fiddlehead ferns, a New England delicacy that I found online for fifty bucks a pound. The �standard� recipe required five pounds of the things, so I opted out on that one.

Overall, the Diary�s user interface isn�t bad, but it could use some improvement. The biggest annoyance is its text and numeric entry fields. They aren�t �hot� when you go to, or return to, a screen that expects user input. For example, search for a food by typing �banana� (or whatever) into the text field.

When you return to the search screen after adding the banana to your breakfast (or whatever), the search field is still highlighted, but it�s not �hot�. You have to tap it to make it editable, and of course tapping it removes the highlight � so, to replace or erase it you have to highlight it again. This problem also applies to entries for number of servings (or grams, ounces, etc.) of a particular food.

To select quantities for a food, the program offers a useful range of choices, including �standardized� servings, sizes (large or small bananas, for example), and often single units (like grapes), or weights in either grams or ounces.

You can fine-tune these amounts by applying a multiplier with one decimal place � like 0.5, or 1.3. If you leave half of the green beans on the plate, you can claim half a serving by entering 0.5 as the number of servings, or 2.6 ounces, or 73.7 grams � choose grams instead of servings from the dropdown menu for the latter option. You must enter the initial zero. Simply keying �point five� will not work. It should.

These customization features apply to exercises as well as foods. You can define a complete workout in several variations and reload them as needed. Or simply choose from the �standard� ones the program offers. The database of exercise isn�t nearly as extensive as the one for food. Maybe that says something about obesity. You decide.

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