NAT home
About NAT
NAT Version 2.0
NAT 2.0 Help
Energy Calculator
Educational Resources
Additional Materials
Research Information
Contact Us

 

STEP 1:
Enter your personal information

The dietary suggestions for men, women, and various age groups are different. Please select your appropriate category so that NAT will give you a more accurate recommendation. Click on the top white pulldown menu in this step, hold the mouse button down, and choose your Age and Gender Category. If you are pregnant or lactating, also choose one of the following catagories.

STEP 2:
Select foods to be analyzed

In order to add a food item to your Personal Diet List (PDL), click the mouse in the white box above the Add Food button and type in the name of the food you wish to add. The Nutrient Analysis Tool will search its extensive database and will return a list of all the food items that match the word or words you typed in. The PDL keeps track of all the foods you add, the serving size and number of servings for each food, and the total gram weight of each food you add.

Helpful Hints for Choosing Foods to be Analyzed

The USDA database has nearly any food that you can possibly think of, but sometimes it has the food listed under a different name or phrase than you might expect. If you have trouble finding a particular food try thinking of other words that mean the same thing.

• start general However, if too many foods are matched, go back and be more specific.
For example:
chicken (225 items matched)
chicken leg (9 items matched)
chicken leg fried (3 items matched)

• try a different word or phrase
For example:
coke (will not match)
carbonated beverage (will match)

• some foods are entered as verbs rather than as nouns
For example:
french fries (will not match)
french fried (will match)

• some foods are entered as plural rather than singular
For example:
 jelly (will not match)
jellies (will match)

• some commercial names are not in the database
For example:
McDonalds or Tyson (will not match)
Cheerios (will match)

Delete Food/Change Amount buttons:

Select the food you want to delete by clicking on the circle in front of it, then click on the Delete Food button.


To change the amount of a food, select the food you want to change by clicking on the circle in front of it, then click on the Change Amount button. This will take you to a page that will ask you what serving size you desire as well as the number of servings.

NAT Tutorial - this requires Shockwave player
This animated tutorial gives a brief description on how to get started using NAT.
Saving NAT Results
If you'd like to save your NAT results and continue to work with them later, you can find detailed instructions for doing so on the Saving NAT Results page.

Suggest Food Help
This function will scan your PDL and then suggest different foods to supplement your diet. First choose the nutrient in which you are either deficient or excessive.Then click the Suggest Foods button.

The resulting list will look exactly the same as the Add Food pages. The list can either be printed out, or you can add one of the suggested foods to your Personal Diet List (and hopefully to your actual diet.)