FITDAY VS. FATSECRET

 On the Atkins Community Forum, there are two popular free food tracking websites that people use.  There is always a friendly "disagreement" on which one is better - Fitday or Fatsecret.

I have tried them both, and I prefer Fitday, and there are only four things I can see that make Fatsecret superior to the free, online version of Fitday:

1.  Fatsecret tracks net carbs and the free, online version of Fitday does not.  It gives you the carbs and fiber, and you have to do the math yourself to get net carbs.  The downloadable PC version of Fitday will track net carbs, but the program costs $30.

2.  Fatsecret lets you track your foods according to breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks, and the free, online version of Fitday keeps all your food in one list.  The PC version of Fitday lets you separate food into meals and snacks.

3.  Fatsecret has lots of brand name foods in their database and Fitday does not.  Personally, I eat mostly real, whole, fresh foods, and I don't use brand name foods, so for me, this is not an issue.  For someone that uses a lot of processed foods or name brand foods, this might be an issue.

4.  Fatsecret has a smart phone ap.  Fitday does not.

Even considering these four differences, I still think Fitday is the program that is easiest to use and has the most tracking options.  Here are the reasons that I think Fitday is better, at least for me:

1.  Fitday lets you track an unlimited number of options, such as calories, carbs, protein, fat, sodium, cholesterol, sugars, fiber,  sodium, nutrients and RDI.  Fatsecret will only let you choose six of these then things to track.  If you want to track net carbs, you have to give up tracking sodium, for example.

2.  Fitday allows you to show your food journal, in its entirety, to anyone by making your journal public and supplying a link.  Fatsecret will let you do that to, but the person you are showing it to needs to have their own account with Fatsecret, and be logged in, and even then, at times you cannot see their full journal.

3.  Fitday allows you to put your food items into your journal in the order you wantto appear.  Fatsecret will put the food items into your journal in the order it wants then to be in, and you have no control over the order.

4.  Fatsecret allows users to input their own information, which then becomes part of the database of foods.  I don't like that a person can put inaccurate information into Fatsecret, and then make it part of the database.  With Fitday, you can make changes to anything you want, but it will not be shared with other Fitday users.

5.  Fitday allows you to customize foods.  If you want to create a custom food, you can choose a similar food and then change the numbers and save it as your custom food.  Fatsecret makes you start from scratch to create a custom food.  And if you decide that one serving is a slice, and enter it that way, when you look at your menu for the day, it will not show you that one serving is one slice, it will only say "one serving".  You have to go to another page to remind yourself of what a "serving" is.  For example, you may decide that "one serving" is one ounce or one gram, and if you forget which it is, you have to go to another page to see that.  When you look at your menu for Fitday, everything is on one page.  You can print that page and hang it on the fridge and know that everything you need to know is on that page.