OVER 2 YOU 166 (03/02/04)

HEALTHY EATING

My wife is a school nurse, and healthy eating is a regular 

topic of interest. I used to have an old DOS program, 

from around 1990, called Dietplan. This was a database 

of foods, meals and ingredients, together with their 

calorific values, fat, carbohydrate and sugar contents 

etc. Ingredients could be combined to make meals, 

and the totals for that meal could be printed and also 

stored in the database as a new entry. New ingredients 

could be added using the information on their packets. 

I've looked everywhere for a Windows equivalent – 

can anyone help?

Mal Denny, via email

Mal Denny might like to take a look at a program called Food in Focus. My daughter used this for her Food Technology GCSE and I think it provides all the information he's likely to need in a reasonably user friendly package. The blurb says it "deals with all major aspects of food and nutrition including diet, recipe analysis and food labelling" and it claims to have over 1000 foods and products on its database. It costs £75 plus VAT for a single user licence. Full details are at: http://www.ridgwellpress.co.uk/

booksites_food/CDr_foodinfocus.htm

Ken Spry, via email

I am a Food Technology teacher and have used a very good program called 'Food for a PC' This CD-ROM based program is easy to use, it has a huge database and will generate various graphs to display your results, work out costs of meals and so on. The program is produced by Linnet Software and more details can be obtained from: http://www.lynx-linnet.com/linnet/index.htm

I also used a wonderful nutrition program, called The Foods You Eat, produced by David Bender, more details can be found on his web site at: http://www.dabender.freeserve.co.uk/foods.html

Jan Fordham, Manchester

The National Dairy Council, now the Dairy Council (http://www.milk.co.uk/) used to have a Windows program named Food feedback though I am not sure if it is still available but someone might still have a copy.

Ivor Bending, via email

I suspect that Dietplan was earlier than 1990, but we 

at Forestfield Software have been supplying a similar 

program since 1992. It was originally called 

Dietplan5, because the food composition data 

was based on the 5th Edition of the dietician’s 

bible: McCance & Widdowson's, The Composition 

of Foods, it was a DOS program that evolved 

into Dietplan5 for Windows.



A new and completely re-written version, following 

the publication of the 6th edition of the above - and 

called Dietplan6, has just been launched. 

See www.forestfield.co.uk for further information 

and to obtain a 30-day free trial copy.

David Hughes, Forestfield Software Ltd

 

A company called KasTech produce a remarkable program called ProHealth. This contains all the calorific and nutritional information on a vast range of foods. It is a double-edged tool in that it also has a huge amount of information on different types of exercise and the energy expended thereby. I think it is aimed mainly at multiple users and health clubs since it contains relational databases, which can be tailored as desired by the user. You should be able to get more details from: http://www.orchidpr.co.uk/index.asp

Rodney Witter, via email

RAINFALL MAPS

Does anyone know where I can download the type of rainfall radar images that the Met Office uses on TV? They seem to offer them only to commercial clients.

David Burnell, via email

Without doubt the best site I have found for weather images is www.westwind.ch. It’s not that easy to navigate, but does link to dozens of meteorological diagrams, radar images and live webcam images. The live pictures in particular are fascinating if you want to preview snow conditions at all European resorts. Its useful for aviation, (Met Office charts), but there are other sites with direct access to Aerodrome weather information.
Simon Phillips, via email

If you mean predicted rainfall, I can't help but if you mean actual rainfall then that is available. You can view the radar images for British Isles on the Met Office website. It is updated once an hour and gives the last six hours, which you can run as a sequence. It isn't real time and you only get the hourly images but it is useful for short-term weather predictions!
http://www.meto.gov.uk/weather/

europe/uk/radar/index.html. You can also save
the images if required.

Alternatively try the BBC Weather website where you can view a similar six-hour version or a 24-hour version with readings every three hours. The display on BBC is much less clear than the Met Office so the only advantage is the opportunity to look back over the last day

Grant Addison, via email

CAN YOU HELP?

We are interested in American Square Dancing. At times, with people of varying aptitudes -- especially beginners, or when learning a new set of steps -- we need to be able to vary the tempo of the music by between plus or minus 5 to 30%.  This was easy to do with cassettes, Philips produced a deck with variable speed playback, but CDs present a problem with their essentially constant speed playback. Can anyone provide a solution, possibly by modifying a CD deck or transferring our music library to a PC?
Roger Avery, via email

I have recently become interested on horology, in a purely amateur way, and get great deal of pleasure from repairing old clocks. However, getting them to run accurately can be a laborious business. I wonder of there’s such a thing as a PC program that can analyse the ‘ticks’, using a microphone, and give an instant readout of whether the clock is running fast or so, so I can make the appropriate adjustments?

Trevor Sinclair, via email