Macros and nutrients

tumbleweed7834
tumbleweed7834 Posts: 42 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Hi Everyone, I took the time today to study my nutrients. This program is for you to see for yourself how you eat if you use the tools. I use macro a lot to balance carbs, protein and fat with nutrients just getting a glance. Today, I was stunned to see so many zeros, especially with potassium, sodium and iron. A few vitamins had zeros as well. I went back a week and now I am back to square one for nutrition.
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  • corinasue1143
    corinasue1143 Posts: 7,464 Member
    First, look at the entries you’re using. Many people don’t include all the nutrients when entering a food. You may be getting more than your diary reflects.
    Second, do a quick google to see which foods are high in the nutrients you’re missing that you like and will eat. Easy to switch one food out for another sometimes.
    If you’re really serious, chronometer goes deeper into specific nutrients, but it’s not as user friendly as MFP—in my opinion.
    It’s so good to keep learning and keep getting healthier!
  • Alatariel75
    Alatariel75 Posts: 18,224 Member
    The vast majority of entries in the database have incomplete information in relation to nutrients, either because people haven't added them, or they aren't on the label to add. Check out the labels in your pantry - most of them will be missing nutrients. You can't really use the MFP database to track nutrients unless you're ensuring every entry you use has the nutrients included, and that they're accurate.
  • tumbleweed7834
    tumbleweed7834 Posts: 42 Member
    So, it is a ballpark figure. No problem, I use it as an awareness tool as posting every bite will get old so fast, I will skidaddle. I am aware I need to pay attention to those nutrients but not obsessive.
  • tumbleweed7834
    tumbleweed7834 Posts: 42 Member
    Hi group, I did my labs last week and my A1C is now 6.5, this time I hope to keep it down. My cholesterol is 229. I can’t watch it like my glucose, but I can keep an estimate through the nutrients page.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,203 Member
    tumbleweed7834 wrote: »
    Hi group, I did my labs last week and my A1C is now 6.5, this time I hope to keep it down. My cholesterol is 229. I can’t watch it like my glucose, but I can keep an estimate through the nutrients page.

    Congratulations on the A1C improvement: That's excellent. What a good motivator to keep going!

    You know cholesterol intake isn't directly related to blood cholesterol levels for most people, I hope?

    What may help more is managing your saturated fat intake; getting plenty of varied, colorful fruits and veggies; and eating high-fiber foods. That, plus getting exercise.

    For many people - those without a family history of high cholesterol in non-overweight people, loosely - just getting to a healthy weight will drop cholesterol. For me, weight loss was pretty much all it took.
  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    A lot of micro nutrients aren't required to be put on food labels and food labels are what most users use to create entries. If it's not on the label, it's not going to make it into the database. In other cases, many users just enter the calories and macros and don't bother entering micro-nutrients.
  • neanderthin
    neanderthin Posts: 10,216 Member
    tumbleweed7834 wrote: »
    Hi group, I did my labs last week and my A1C is now 6.5, this time I hope to keep it down. My cholesterol is 229. I can’t watch it like my glucose, but I can keep an estimate through the nutrients page.

    Keep in mind that blood work for LDL on it's own isn't really a good predictor for heart disease and the standard blood test doesn't show which LDL particles are predominant. Those break down into 2 groups, pattern A and pattern B. If your pattern A you basically will never have heart disease, pretty much regardless of the LDL number. Pattern B are the problem LDL which are small and dense and become oxidized. This is the pattern that shows up in the current population who have most of the inflammatory problems and is associated with diabetes and obesity.

    The good news is even though pattern A or B doesn't show up on the standard blood test but if your HDL is at acceptable levels and the higher the better and triglycerides are low and below 80 is very good, mine are in the 50's at the moment this is associated with pattern A. As a predictor for heard disease HDL/Triglycerides are 500% a better predictor for heart disease and actually LDL-C really means very little. You can also ask for blood work that show these pattern LDL's just ask your Dr. Cheers
  • tumbleweed7834
    tumbleweed7834 Posts: 42 Member
    I was not aware of the cholesterol stuff, but I do have a lower than average risk for heart disease. I am also leaning towards the KIND diet, more produce, more fish. I have always leaned to a high carb diet, a lifelong biscuit eater, and sliced bread. Baloney sandwiches and ham. Birthday cakes and holiday pies.I don’t see this journey as a diet, it is a food choice.
  • tumbleweed7834
    tumbleweed7834 Posts: 42 Member
    I have been so concerned about my health, I was beginning to believe I am a hypochondriac only to find out I am just nutritionally ignorant! I have a high blood calcium level, still in range but way up there. I looked into it and found out wheat blocks calcium absorption! So does spinach. You need a two hour gap between a calcium rich dish and milk. The article also said don’t drink milk with your chili.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,052 Member
    tumbleweed7834 wrote: »
    Hi Everyone, I took the time today to study my nutrients. This program is for you to see for yourself how you eat if you use the tools. I use macro a lot to balance carbs, protein and fat with nutrients just getting a glance. Today, I was stunned to see so many zeros, especially with potassium, sodium and iron. A few vitamins had zeros as well. I went back a week and now I am back to square one for nutrition.

    I'm anemic and don't rely on food alone to get the iron I need, but do notice that many USER-created food entries have incorrect or missing iron counts. For example, manufacturers may list iron in grams, but MFP uses percents, and I have seen when people create an entry and do bother to fill in iron, they use the gram value rather than the %, resulting in a much lower number. Often people do not bother to fill in micros at all.

    I've never noticed a problem with micros on ADMIN-created entries, so try to use these as much as possible.

    Unfortunately, the green check marks in the MFP database are used for both USER-created entries and ADMIN-created entries that MFP pulled from the USDA database. A green check mark for USER-created entries just means enough people have upvoted the entry - it is not necessarily correct.

    To find ADMIN entries for whole foods, I get the syntax from the USDA database and paste that into MFP. All ADMIN entries from the USDA will have weights as an option BUT there is a glitch whereby sometimes 1g is the option but the values are actually for 100g. This is pretty easy to spot though, as when added the calories are 100x more than is reasonable.

    https://fdc.nal.usda.gov

    Use the “SR Legacy” tab - that seems to be what MFP used to pull in entries.

    Note: any MFP entry that includes "USDA" was USER entered.

    For packaged foods, I verify the label against what I find in MFP. (Alas, you cannot just scan with your phone and assume what you get is correct.)

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