There used to be an open-sourced version of Clipper, wasn't there? That was the dBase 3 compiler from a 3rd party. Did that go extinct?
Somebody wrote:
> But... isn't the tool the least of your problems? The big one being,
> where are you going to get your nutritional database. (Seems to me that
> most of what Weight Watchers and Noom do is collect data on millions of
> products.)
>From my records in my free format database (which would not be suitable for
your program (at least not in its present condition), some notes on available
databases.
>From "USDA databases" Thu Sep 08 06:57:41 2016
Date: 09/08/16 06:57 am
Subject: USDA databases
There is documentation available to explain how the databases are organized,
what they contain, etc. Several different formats are available (ASCII text,
Access, etc.) Statistical information (e.g., standard deviation) is available
for some data.
* [[http://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=8964][USDA National
Nutrient Database for Standard Reference: Release 28]]
*
[[http://www.ars.usda.gov/sp2UserFiles/Place/80400525/Data/SR/SR28/sr28_doc.pdf]
[Composition of Foods: Raw, Processed, Prepared; USDA National Nutrient
Database for Standard Reference, Release 28 (2015); Documentation and User
Guide]]
* [[https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/docs/SR_BrandedFoods_May2016.pdf][USDA
Branded Food Products Database; Documentation; May 2016]]--an experimental
public / private partnership, dissolved in 2015 (iirc) after developing data
for 354 products, incorporated as an adjunct (iiuc) to the USDA database SR28
* [[https://www.ars.usda.gov/Services/docs.htm?docid=24912][SR27 - Download
Files]]
And, from some documentation on CRON-O-Meter (which is a program like you're
describing, available in an online version and a Linux version:
<quote>
The foods in our database come from several sources.
* NCCDB (Nutrition Coordinating Center Food & Nutrient Database) from the
University of Minnesota, contains over 16000 food entries with comprehensive
data on 70 nutrients.
* USDA (SR28) (United States Department of Agriculture National Nutrient
Database for Standard Reference (SR28)) contains over 8000 food entries with
data on over 70 nutrients.
* ESHA (ESHA Research, Inc.) contains over 35000 brand name products and
restaurant menu items. These items don't typically have as full of a nutrient
profile as the USDA and NCCDB items, but contain all the published information
from the product nutrition labels--I don't know how many nutrients--may vary.
* ???? Nutritionix: barcode scanning database, contains data for over
400,000 food product nutrition labels--I don't know how many nutrients--may
vary. Nutritionix API
* CNF 2010 (Canadian Nutrient File)
This data has a lot of overlap with the USDA data (many entries are
derived it), but adds a lot of additional foods, as well as reflecting
differences found in Canadian foods. It has french and english names for all
items, as well as standard measures in metric units--I don't know how many
nutrients--may vary.
* IFCDB (Irish Food Composition Database) contains nearly 1000 irish food
and supplement products--I don't know how many nutrients--may vary.
* CRDB (CRON-O-Meter Community Database) foods submitted by CRON-O-Meter
users (they show green in the food search dialog)--I don't know how many
nutrients--may vary.
* Custom
These are your custom foods. These are private and can only be viewed and
used by you, or any friends you have linked to for food-sharing--nutrients
included may vary based on where I got the data (I mean, like from which of
the databases listed below.
</quote>
One of my points is that data / databases are available.
I'm also willing to share with you my file on my experiences with this type of
program. NUT is available for LInux, but it was really freaky -- for example,
you had to specify how many meals per day you intended to eat (for this
example, assume 6, 3 meals, 3 between meal snacks, and then when you entered
the first meal it multiplied all the nutritional values by 6. I forget what it
did as you entered the other meals.
CRON-O-Meter was much better, but not really good enough to suit me.
I experimented with possibly as many as 10 such programs that I could run
without touching Windows. One of them (I forget which) tracked something like
60 different nutrients, things like micrograms and such of minerals, vitamins,
...
If you're really interested, I can make my file with my notes in it available
to you.
You can treat it as a plain text file, or read it as emails in any email client
that can handle mbox files, or, with a special file I can provide, read it in
kate with the features I intended it to have (syntax highlighting and
folding).