merliot02 Posted October 25, 2014 Report Share Posted October 25, 2014 Hello, I need some suggestions on where to look for the following: This is the issue that I have: I need to sort the USDA database by ratio. For example, using Nutrition Data, I can sort all foods in the Nuts and Seeds category in this manner: Highest in Fat AND Lowest in protein - as an example. http://nutritiondata.self.com/foods-012015000000078000000-1w.html? But the foods ranked from #1 to #126 in this list does not coincide with the ranking that would obtain were the foods to be ranked by the RATIO of fat to protein. The one-number ratio of fat to protein (2X/5X/10X) is what I need. [The carb to protein ratio also is of interest to me. Dr. Wurtman of MIT, maybe he's retired now, wrote a paper years ago about how managing the carb to protein ratio could be (was?) important in managing Parkinson's or Alzheimers (don't remember which). If anyone is interested, I'll try and locate a link to the paper and post it here. The ratio was 5:1, by the way.] So I don't know where to go to be able to do a ranking of this sort. No web-based database that I know of enables such a capability. Not here: https://cronometer.com/ Nor here: http://nutritiondata.self.com/ Nor here: http://yarrow.best.vwh.net/Usda_data/foods_db.html Or here: http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/ Steve Cushing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnnabelM Posted October 25, 2014 Report Share Posted October 25, 2014 Hey - I've also looked for this (albeit cursorily) and failed to find anything useful. I ended up using a spreadsheet to compute ratios for a short list of foods I buy regularly. I'd be interested to hear if anyone else has a better way! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
merliot02 Posted October 26, 2014 Author Report Share Posted October 26, 2014 This isn't web-based information, like what's available at Nutrition Data, which is what I'm looking for, but rather a software program. http://www.walford.com/software.htm In the link, it says: "Dr. Roy Walford's Interactive Diet Planner - Now available with sustaining membership to the Calorie Restriction Society." This is a forum on the Calorie Restriction Society website, so I presume someone can answer definitively whether this software program can do algorithmic calculations. It may very well, but I sure would like to find this capability in a web-based format. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael R Posted November 7, 2014 Report Share Posted November 7, 2014 DWIDP hasn't been updated in a very long time, and was pretty crude by today's standard; I doubt it can be run on contemporary machines, and don't remember it having this capability. I agree that this would be a great feature. I have often used NutritionData's nutrient search tool in the past for multi-parameter nutrient searches (CRON-O-Meter's is just for nutrient density), and have been baffled by the results when you just try eg. "high in fat" "low in protein" "per Calorie" (or vice-versa) -- which should, in principle, do roughly what you want it to do. Sorry I couldn't be more help! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pachu Posted November 28, 2014 Report Share Posted November 28, 2014 Hi all! I routinely do analyses like this by downloading the database in Excel format from the USDA and then importing this into the free statistical software package R http://cran.r-project.org/ The learning curve for R is a little steep but well worth the effort. If I get a spare moment I'll perform this analysis for you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pachu Posted November 28, 2014 Report Share Posted November 28, 2014 I got a moment! On my drive, in the folder "macroratios" are two pdf files with ranked data for both fat to protein and carb to protein. The readme explains what I did and if it isn't what you were looking for Steve, it would be trivial to rerun these analyses so let me know. Same with the format if pdf isn't what you're after. https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B10kLHx60XW8SWRucEQtUzF3WkU&usp=sharing What really interests me is whether it is possible to capture the notion of "ideal foods for calorie restriction" into a mathematical formula. I've been playing with this idea for a while. For example, if you define a "good" nutrient as one that it is hard to overdose on and a "bad" one as those one would like to avoid completely (trans fat, DHA?) it is fairly simple to perform a ranking of foods where calories are inversely proportional to good minus bad nutrients. It would be nice to add in other information relating to glycemic impact, and possibly antinutrients like phytates etc.. These macroratios might well figure in such a model. What becomes difficult is weighting the importance of these various factors, in a principled way, when you put them all together. If anyone has any ideas about this or has an analysis that they'd like to see performed on the usda database, I'd be happy to run it. Eugene Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.