healnut v1.3 - April 2010

On this version we have a couple of adds:

• You can get a pdf version of any food item or recipe to print it or save it to your computer. By the moment this function is not available for comparations. To generate the pdfs I use the TCPDF class, it's a free open source php class you can obtain visiting the TCPDF project page.
• To help see how a food item or recipe xx the dietary recommendations for each nutrient with a glance, the previously dark blue bars on graphics have changed to have a color that reflects which range 25%-50%-75%-100% of the dietary recommendation represents the amount contained in the items. The relation between color and amount is explained following the link.

healnut v1.2 - February 2010

This version has taken a little bit to be completed bu it has several interesting novelties:

• Best of all them, recipes can be created and the nutrients and scores of the whole recipe are shown the same way they are for food items. See for example my favorite smoothie recipe
• The nutrient database has been upgraded to the latest USDA revision, SR22.
• User accounts have been added too, so now you can save and edit the recipes you create and store favorite food items and recipes.
• It has also been added the ability to compare the nutrients and scores of any recipe with any other recipe or food item of the database, the same way it was done in previous versions.
• Recipes and food items scores has been modified to left just those with direct relation with dietary recommendations.
• Now in nutrient graphics you can see, as well as the nutrient weight in gr/mg/µr, the percentage this weight represents of dietary daily recommendations for adult women and men.

Next things to be added, althoug I'll take some rest now, will be the capability to get a pdf version of any food item or recipe nutritional information and a couple more things I have on mind.

In the versión 1.0 acknowledgements I completelly forgot to cite wordreference.com, an free online dictionary I have always open when I'm writing in english. It can translate from english to 16 languages, but I use it mainly for es-en translation. Very useful its forum, where you will find developed explanations for a lot of words and sentences, you can even ask for counsel if you don't find some translation or you have any doubt.

healnut v1.1 - November 2009

Finally the only novelty of this version is the translation to spanish of the while website. User accounts and recipes on December.

healnut v1.0 - October 2009

Version 1.0 is finally released, I'm already working on version 1.1, adding user accounts and basic recipe creation functions. This version is planned to be released in a month or two.

healnut v0.9 - September 2009

It provides a visual interface to the nutritional information contained in the USDA SR19 Nutritional information database. You can found the current release of this database, SR21, following this link to the USDA. There are currently a few more useful things provided by healnut.com:

• A set of scores as a way to easily view in which nutritional aspects a food is better or worst.
• The ability to provide an xml file with the nutritional info of every food item.
• A tool to view on the same page the nutritional information of any two food items to let you easily compare the nutrients of both items. See a sample page comparing the nutrients of an apple and a pear.

Version 0.9 is under final development and test, the final release is planned to happen on October 2009.

Things to come...

Next thing to be added will be user accounts, where you will be able to set some preferences like DRIs, global filtering options to view for example just vegetal food items, and other settings to customize search results and the information displayed on nutritional reports. And second thing in the list will be to add recipes to the database and view the nutrients of the whole recipe.

If you want to suggest any function or improvement you can do it in the wishlist (please read the list before to avoid duplication).

Thanks!

This website has been developed using free information and free tools and applications. I will thank all those people who share this information and tools in which they're dedicated a lot of time and energy, to the benefit of us all. Here you can see some of these applications. You can view a lot more following the link to the GNU project.

• SR19 is the nutritional info database publicly available on the USDA website. The current version is SR21.
  I'll upgrade to this latest version as soon as possible.
• Inkscape is an Open Source vector graphics editor, with capabilities similar to Illustrator, CorelDraw, or Xara X, using the W3C standard Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) file format.
  Inkscape is the application I've used to draw all the food clipart and icons.
• GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring.
• LaTeX is a high-quality typesetting system; it includes features designed for the production of technical and scientific documentation. LaTeX is the de facto standard for the communication and publication of scientific documents.
  I've used it for create all the pdfs included in the site, including the automatic generated pdf's for every food item graphical report.
• Python is a dynamic object-oriented programming language that can be used for many kinds of software development. It offers strong support for integration with other languages and tools, comes with extensive standard libraries, and can be learned in a few days. I've used it for tasks from converting the MS Access database to MySQL to reading the scores of all the food items and generating the score tables amongst a lot of other tasks.
• Mozilla Firefox, an open-source web browser with the WebDeveloper add-on, a toolbar for mozilla with a ton of functions to help you when developing a website, just to mention a couple of them you can resize the window to see how a page is rendered in any resolution you want, validate the html and css with just one click, view the css properties of any item just mousing over it, etc.

healnut.com runs and is powered by free software as well. Not a surprise I guess:

• Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run. Debian uses the Linux kernel (the core of an operating system), but most of the basic OS tools come from the GNU project; hence the name GNU/Linux.
• The Apache HTTP Server Project is an effort to develop and maintain an open-source HTTP server for modern operating systems including UNIX and Windows NT.
  Since April 1996 Apache has been the most popular HTTP server on the World Wide Web. As of March 2009, Apache served over 46% of all websites and over 66% of the million busiest. Apache is the application that sends you all the pages of this website.
• MySQL is a relational database management system (RDBMS) which has more than 6 million installations.It stores all the nutritional info amongst other things.
• PHP is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML. Php is the language used to generate the dynamic content of the pages.

I will also thank all the people who contributed to this preject with ideas, criticism, support, etc. In the contributors list you can see some of them.

Finally the developers of this website are just me by now but I plan to open the project to more people in the future. I'm a telecommunication and electronics engineer with a lot of different interests. Nutrition, web design and programming are just some of them. You can see my personal profile following the link.