How the Nutracheck app features can help you

Food diary

Without doubt the key feature of our app is the food diary, where users track all the food and drink they have each day.

Here are the key features of the diary:

• Search and add foods – simply search for the food or drink you had by typing in a search term, e.g. porridge. With over 430,000 UK foods in our database you're sure to find what you had, which makes tracking what you eat super easy.
• Barcode scanner – if you have the product packaging to hand, simply scan the barcode to find the product in our database. Easy!
• Meal occasions – the default diary is split into four meal occasions – breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. But you also have the option to add two other meal occasions of your choice, and to edit the names of your meal occasions for customisation. This means you can create a diary view that’s perfect for you and your dietary habits.
• Fast track – popular foods and those you log most often will be saved in your fast track list. Just tap on the meal occasion bar to see your list, and to make tracking your most eaten foods even easier.
• Diary trackers – at the bottom of your diary you have a choice of two diary trackers to view, from four options – 5-a-day, water, alcohol units and alcohol calories. These help you keep a close eye on those elements of a healthy diet so you can see how you're doing at a glance.
• Diary totals – also at the bottom of your diary, you'll see your calorie and nutrient totals for the day, against your targets. This helps you see if you're sticking within your personal targets for your health and weight goals.
• Nutrient tracking – as well as calories, which are most important when aiming to lose, maintain or gain weight, we also track seven key nutrients – carbs, sugar, fat, saturated fat, protein, fibre and salt. You can view calories and three nutrients in your main diary or switch out calories completely and just track four nutrients if you'd prefer. Tap on the nutrient column to switch between nutrients so you can see how you're doing against your allowance for each.
• Other helpful features – save your most regularly eaten foods to your Favourites for easy access. Copy foods or meals over several days if you eat them frequently. Group several foods together in your diary to create a meal which is saved for future use.

Progress section

This section of the app helps you track the things that are most important to you – whether that be your weigh-ins, changes in waist measurements, body fat percentage, muscle mass or clothes size – there are several measurements to choose from.

Keeping track of your progress over time helps you see how far you've come, and how the changes you're making impact your body, from altering your weight to changing your body composition.

My Meals

This section of the app allows you to create and save your own homemade recipes, as well as providing helpful meal ideas when you need them. Creating a recipe helps you to accurately track the calories and nutrients in your home cooked foods – and saving them makes it super easy next time you need to add a portion to your diary.

Or if you're stuck for ideas, pop into this section and check out some of our Popular Recipes or exclusive BBC Good Food recipes for inspiration.

Nutrient goals

We understand that everyone is different, so a dietary approach that suits one, may not suit another. This is why we have 7 nutrient goals to choose from – Well Balanced, Lower Carb, Lower Fat, Higher Protein, Less Sugar, 5:2 Diet and an option to Set My Own targets. Our default goal is Well Balanced which follows the healthy eating guidelines set for the general population. But if you prefer or need to eat a little less fat or sugar for example, you can choose the nutrient goal that best suits you.

Food reports

This features provides a list of the foods you've eaten which contributed the most fat or saturated fat for example. This helps you keep an eye on certain nutrients and which foods are contributing to them the most in your diet. Helpful if you want to make a few tweaks to reduce a specific nutrient in your diet. This section also has a bar chart highlighting how you're doing against your daily calorie and nutrient allowances. The bar will show as green when you're within your allowance, but may turn amber or red if you go over certain nutrients. For more guidance on your nutrient allowances, read our blog here.

Exercise tracking

Within the diary there is a section for tracking all of your daily exercise. Search our exercise database for your workout e.g. cycling, swimming or running – or even your favourite Jane Fonda workout! Or sync up your activity tracker to automatically track your daily steps or activity via this. Each day you can see how many calories you're burning through activity, so you can ensure you're eating more on your active days.

Helpful articles

We have hundreds of blog articles covering all sorts of health and fitness related topics. Tap on 'More' > 'Blog' and search for something of interest – or simply scroll through our most recent articles. You're sure to find something to spark your interest or answer any burning questions you might have.

Member forums

If you enjoy chatting to like-minded people, visit our Forums where some of our members chat about all things diet and fitness related. You're sure to find helpful replies to any questions you have, or simply people on a similar journey to you to share tips with.

And many more...

The app also links to popular fitness trackers such as Fitbit, Garmin and Apple Watch – plus you can set yourself reminders to drink water or log your meals. Both of these features, and others, can be found under 'More'.