Published by The Hearst Corp.

1111 Bayhill Drive

San Bruno, CA. 94066

Grade Levels: Multi-age (high-school – college/professional)

Subject areas: Science, Nutrition

Health, and Family & Consumer Science

Reviewed by: Maureen D. Reubelt

Nutritionist V is an extensive, large, scientific program that analyzes an individual’s diet, tracks clients, design and analyze menus and recipes. The program provides charts for tracking daily intakes based on age and sex and establishes goals for maintaining, gaining or losing weight. The program provides recipes for "quantity service" of 100 servings, but can also scale down for consumer or classroom use.

Nutritionist V is a complete program suitable for use by a hospital, a registered dietician or nutritionist. The program accurately lists many foods and their nutrition information and can analyze any recipe or food product. The program also provides for a complete analysis of all 40 nutrients required by the human body. A user menu in the shape of the standard food pyramid guides the user through the various sections of the program. The program is designed for standard male-female nutrition needs and is free of gender or ethnic bias.

Analyzing a diet "by hand" is time consuming. Nutritionist V allows the user to easily and efficiently enter information about their diet and quickly receive comparison results for a healthy diet. This program is designed for professional use and lacks graphics, animations and sound that are typical in some student-oriented diet analysis programs. The main menu is clear and succinct and can bring the user to their area of interest. Once inside the program, the user may need time to explore the many facets of the program and what its capabilities are.

The ability to quickly analyze almost any food item makes Nutritionist V a necessity in diet analysis. After analyzing their personal diets, the students can create nutritious menus and daily meal plans based on recipes from the program. Students can analyze fast foods, cafeteria foods, and frozen entrees by name brand thus enhancing student interest and desire to work with the program. This is not a program designed for school use, but the technology this program affords makes it a useful supplemental tool for teaching nutrition. The use of a 123-question survey makes it possible for students to receive a complete nutritional analysis of their daily intakes.

Nutritionist V has the ability to engage all students of various learning ability – male and female – because it provides information that is useful to the students. Whether a student is interested in sports nutrition, gaining weight or losing weight, the program provides opportunities for any diet analysis. Because most students are interested in their appearance and sometimes being in certain weight categories for sports teams, this program is naturally engaging. Designing your own personal diet plan is far more interesting than merely studying healthy eating. Through the use of a rubric and portfolio, the diet analysis which students design could be used for assessment purposes. For a final exam, students could create a complete menu of healthy eating based on recipes from this program.

This instructor would use Nutritionist V for diet analysis and teaching students to properly read a food label. Ideally, each student should have access to the program on his or her own computer as in a lab setting. Students may need some help in getting started with the program, but once initiated, the students can work independently. The teacher could assess student progress by evaluating their completed diet analysis and revised diets.

Due to the program’s extensive capabilities, this user would use the program mainly for diet analysis purposes. After a review in a computer lab with one student per computer, I would ask students (who have already been tracking their dietary intake for 3 days) to begin entering the data into the computer. This could be completed in one class period and students would have a complete nutritional analysis at the end of class. This program also aids in the study of food labels and analyzing foods for their nutritional value. The teacher would guide students in making dietary changes that have been recommended by Nutritionist V.

This is an excellent and extensive nutrition program that exceeds the needs of most high school classrooms. Nutritionist V is an engaging and useful supplemental learning aid in the study of nutrition and foods and in particular for diet analysis and revising a student’s diet toward healthier eating. It is also useful for the study of food labels and establishing a healthy diet for an athlete.

This program has been rated a 10.

This review of Nutritionist V concludes that this program, while vast and extensive, is an excellent resource to be used as a supplemental tool in the study of foods and nutrition.