Have you always wanted to know all you can about all you eat, or has a recent lifestyle change made you more aware? Have you or a loved one recently been put on a strict diet? Diabetic? Low carbohydrate? If so,  US FoodInfo Nutrition Database from Harald Meyer provides an easy window into the USDA nutrition database of more than 7,500 food items with details on calories, fat, carbs, and other nutritional components.

FoodInfo costs $0.99 (USD) and is compatible with Nokia Smartphones (touch and keyboard). I tested it on my Nokia N8.

Let’s get right to the good stuff. Here is the nutrition information for that essential element of life: chocolate (the ingredient, not the confection.)

Nutritional components are shown graphically and in text form.

If you are not the “cook it from scratch” type, don’t worry. Just search and find your chocolate fix in ready-to-eat form.

Easy search lets you find items by keyword.

... and find the details about your favorite ready-to-eat foods.

Side note: The color changes you see in the screen shots are not the result of FoodInfo. They are driven by Nokia Situations, an app from Beta Labs I am working with for an upcoming review. I currently have Situations configured to change the theme on my N8 depending on whether I’m in the office (orange) or not (blue).

If you looked closely at the detailed listings of chocolate and Breyer’s ice cream, you probably spotted one of my minor criticisms with the FoodInfo app. I see that Breyer’s ice cream has 2.17 grams of fat, but I don’t see from this screen what portion size is being analyzed here. Is this 2.17 grams per spoonful? Per liter? The flaw is only skin deep, though. The information is available as we’ll see when we dig into the grains database.

Deep database

To check the database coverage I decided to look at grains. Any good nutritional database should cover the usual suspects: rice, corn, wheat, maybe barley. I was interested to know if it had an entry about one of my favorite grains: buckwheat. Technically it did not have a listing for buckwheat — it had four! And that’s just for the basic database that comes in the distribution package — there is a larger free database available. Impressive.

The depth of data is impressive: three entries for buckwheat alone.

Digging into the buckwheat groats entry you see how to check portion size: Options/Select quantity. From there you can see the quantity currently selected, and change the quantity if you desire.

Select Options/Select quantity to see and configure portion sizes.

If you need or want this app, you have probably stopped reading by now and are in the middle of installing it. For those who still need a little convincing, here are a few more features for you to consider:

Advanced search lets you see the top 100 foods or search by nutritional component.

Save items to your personal favorites list.

Here is the beginning of my favorites list.

Customize the database by adding, deleting, or customizing items.

Customize the database if you want.

The US FoodInfo Nutrition Database is a great way to know all the details about all you eat, whether it’s information you have always wanted to know or whether recent changes in your life makes this information critical. FoodInfo costs $0.99 (USD) and is compatible with Nokia Smartphones (touch and keyboard).

More information, including access to the extended food database, is available on the developer’s website.