Development and testing of a statistical and graphics-enhanced nutrient analysis program

The authors have developed and tested a nutrient analysis program that will compute and present graphically summary statistics of population and population subgroup nutrient intakes. The program analyzes for 44 nutrients from 5,800 separate food items. Capabilities of the program include: storage of large numbers of diet records and evaluations of their nutrients; calculation of nutrient means and standard deviations; data sorting based on subject characteristics, such as age, sex, and supplement use; and generation of bar graphs and line plots for individual and/or group data. To test this computerized nutrient analysis program, two sets of 3-day diet records from 200 elderly individuals were analyzed. The program was then used to generate means, differences between means, and distribution frequencies of designated nutrients for various population subgroups (e.g., men ≥65 years vs. men ≥80 years) as well as comparisons with individual files (e.g., Mr. Smith vs. all men ≥65 years). The statistical and graphics capabilities also function within the context of recipe analysis and menu planning, which enhances the application of this program in institutional and community nutrition settings.