Foods

A food tells Chow the nutrients in something you eat.

food greek-yogurt "Greek yogurt, nonfat"  ; source:fdc/170903
    170 g = 150 kcal 11 carb 0 fat 26 protein 90 sodium 11 sugar
    1 cup = 220 kcal 16 carb 0 fat 38 protein
        130 sodium 16 sugar 2% calcium 6% iron

Anatomy of a Food

Each food has a handle, a name, optional tags, and one or more servings.

Handle

The handle is a short, easy-to-type name, e.g. greek-yogurt. It can contain letters, digits, _, and -. Each food and recipe needs a unique handle.

These words are reserved and can’t be handles: format, include, food, container, recipe, target, burn, metric, weight, and servings.

When you add a food in the app, Chow suggests a handle from the name. For example, Kirkland Signature Organic Peanut Butter becomes organic-peanut-butter.

To rename a handle, use chow rename or the food’s sheet in the app. Chow updates every entry and recipe that uses it.

Name

The name is what Chow displays. It goes in double quotes.

Tags

Tags go in a comment after the name, as key:value. The value can have spaces if you use quotes, e.g. brand:"Trader Joe's".

Chow looks for two tags:

• source is where the food came from. See Sources.
• basis is which daily values a percentage refers to. See Nutrients.

Chow keeps other tags, like brand, but does not use them.

Servings

Each indented line indicates a serving, including an amount, =, and the nutrients in that amount. For example, 1 cup = 220 kcal means one cup has 220 kcal.

A unit can be any text, e.g. 1 medium onion or 2 slices.

Some servings can have a long list of nutrients. To continue a long serving on the next line, indent it further, like the 1 cup serving above.

Unknown and Zero

0 fat means the food has no fat. Leaving out fat means the fat is unknown.

When a nutrient is unknown, Chow shows that day’s total as “at least” the sum.

Units

Chow reads spelled-out units as their abbreviations and ignores case. For example, 170 grams is 170 g, and 1 Medium Onion is 1 medium onion.

Chow converts between weights: g, mg, kg, oz, and lb. It does not convert volumes, e.g. cup to tbsp, because that depends on the food.

Sources

The source tag is written backend/id.

A food with no source was entered by hand.

Next

Log what you eat.