Type 1 Diabetes Carb Counter

Steve Ems

About this app

Type 1 Diabetes Carb Counter

This application uses the USDA nutrition database and the USDA Food Data Central database as sources of carbohydrates and other nutrients. This app is primarily for Type 1 diabetics. It displays the carbohydrates for the amount you want to consume at a meal or snack time. The nutrients button shows other nutrients besides carbohydrates, including calories and total fat.

• Reads the barcode on a food package and then automatically searches the internet for the barcoded food item.
• Uses a local USDA Nutrition database with over 8,700 food items.
• Uses the internet to search the USDA Food Data Central database with over 336,600 food items updated continuously. Saves each search result to a local FDC database.
• Saves USDA Food Data Central food items in a local database.
• Can work offline using the local databases. Internet access for USDA database can be turned off.
• Search directly from the opening page using words or the upc code from a food item.
• Searches are fast, usually less than a second.
• Nutrition values are now in the new USDA nutrition label format.
• Display the brand owner, upc, or gtin code by setting check boxes in the settings.
• Email your user database or a single food item to anyone and then download the database to any Android device.
• Basic use is on one page. Other less used pages are nutrients, settings, and help.
• Help page has an index to help find topics and can be set as a half page help on main screen.
• Portrait display only.
• Fast searches with words in any order.
• Saves your searches for easy reuse.
• Use English or metric units or both in meals and recipes.
• You can use weight or volume units for most food items.
• You can use fractions or decimals.
• Has a numeric calculator and conversion calculator that can use fractions as well as decimals.
• Enter a single food item, meal or recipe.
• Save your food item, meal or recipe to a local database.
• Shows these nutrients on the Nutrients page: Calories, Total fat, Saturated fat, Polyunsaturated fat, Monounsaturated fat, Cholesterol, Sodium, Total Carbohydrates, Dietary Fiber, Total Sugar, and Protein.
• Requires permissions to save files locally and use the camera.

If you have a food item that is not in the USDA database, you can enter your own and save it to the user database. The minimum required data is serving size, carbohydrates per serving, and the amount you want. You can enter other nutrients as well on the Nutrients page.

If you have multiple items for a meal, or have a recipe, you can enter the ingredients to get the total carbohydrates. Save this to the user database with any name. The recipe ingredients are shown at the bottom of the screen and saved with the item you save.

Most items in the USDA database have weight and volume units as well as descriptions that are not units. A good example is Apples, raw, fuji, with skin which has two descriptions, 1 cup sliced and 1 large. If you select 1 cup sliced, the units will be cup so you can use a measuring cup, tablespoons, liters, etc. If you select 1 large, the units will be large. You could select 2 large for two apples or 1/2 large for half an apple.

For food items not in the databases, you will have to search the manufacturers web site or get it from a nutrition label. If you expect to use this food item again, save the food item to the user database.

A cooking database was extracted from the USDA database and put at the beginning of the search so that if you search for salt, you will find Salt, table near the top of the screen in the Cooking Database.

There is a miscellaneous database that includes food items and recipes that we have entered for our granddaughter. It does not have all the nutrients or show the recipe for all items.