Customer Reviews

The Complete Book of Food Counts, 7th edition

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I bought this book so that I could easily figure my caloric and nutritional intake with a pocket-sized book that would be easy to carry around. Unfortunately, the lists in here are unwieldy and overloaded with burdonsome amounts of data on pre-packaged foods. Why would I need this information from a book when it is listed on the package itself? Because of the pages and pages of info on frozen entrees and chain restaurant food, it is difficult to impossible to find out, say, how many calories are in 3 oz of sirloin steak.
I recommend instead Lavon J. Dunne's Nutrition Almanac, 5th ed. It gives charts of basic foods and their nutritional content, including vitamins and minerals, in far more detail, as well as a glycemic index chart, chapters on nutrition and health without bombarding a person with the latest diet fads, and charts on daily nutritional requirements. Plus, it is fully indexed, so you can look things up more easily.
The only plus I can give to The Complete Book of Food Counts is that is might be useful for people who eat out at chain restaurants, since it has menus for some of them.

I give this book three stars because I don't regret buying it, and I use it frequently.

It has significant flaws, however.

First, it's too big. It's 900 pages long, too thick and bulky, about the size of a fat novel. Not exactly portable. Ideally it should be pocket sized. And a hard or laminated cover, maybe with a ring binding, would be ideal.

While it has the exact listing I'm looking for three quarters of the time, and an approximate listing most of the rest of the time, it has way too many superfluous entries for branded & packaged foods (which as another reviewer notes always have nutrition info on them anyway) and restaurant menus (which while occasionally useful, since some restaurants don't make their nutrition info readily available, is still just gumming up the book with superfluity.)

Another huge peeve I have with it is that while the entries for a particular food can go on for several pages, the serving size information is usually listed only for the very first entry (unless there's an exception) which forces you to flip back - oftentimes several pages - to find the head of the entry. Listing the serving sizes at the top of every new page the item is listed on would be a keen idea.

The measurement units also differ from food to food, sometimes from item to item within the same food category. Cups to ounces to pieces. A little confusing. Standardized measurement would be helpful. Having both the Metric (g/ml) and English (oz/cups) values consistantly listed together would be really great, too. Make it easier and clearer, please.

Anyway, this is still a useful book. In lieu of a better option (something way more portable, concise and consistent) I would still buy it. I didn't do a lot of research when I got it, and still haven't examined alternatives. I use software now to do most of my nutritional counts. This book is just a helpful auxiliary resource.

how many of us know basic food nutritional values? how many of us know what restaurants and processors put in their offerings and the effect upon our nutrition?

while some purist reviewers may balk at having ALL information at their disposal, i, for one, do not. i bought the original years ago and continue to update (as branded and restaurant offerings change or disappear) to this day.

my partner uses weight watcher points system and this volume is invaluable. ignore the naysayers, you can never learn or have enough knowledge about what you dump down your throat!!

We have been using this book for about a decade, and appreciate that it does seem to include every morsel of food in a supermarket aisle.

To consider which foods are BEST for our health, we'd really need to compare, well, apples and oranges. But for this purpose the measurements in this book are wonky: one sort of fruit is measured in ounces, for example, and the next in cups! Sure, I can calculate that comparison, but since it's already on the package, I don't need a book to do that. Please save me the calculation--please list EVERYTHING in 1 oz. portions, and I will do the rest. Using exclusively a 1 oz. serving size volume will allow us to see the relative values of all our food choices, and let's be real, this is what you imply in the title of this book, am I right?

This book is a "must read" for everyone concerned about maintaining
good health. It's good for dieters, health buffs, young and old.
Whether you are well or ill, the book will help guide you
to health or maintain current health. The volume rates both
genetic and brand name foods. In my own experience, it is
important to read labels. Sodas can vary from 12 gms. of sugar
to 50 gms. of sugar per can. This is a huge variance with
disastrous consequences for people in a pre-diabetic state.

The book lists food characteristics accordingly:
- calories
- protein
- carbs
- fat gms.
- cholesterol
- sodium
- fiber

The average person needs between 1700-2500 calories per day
depending upon a variety of assumptions. i.e. lifestyle,
couch potato v. athlete, height/weight, man/woman , muscle mass
etc.

During the day, the difference between a pie and a small
scoop of peanut butter is significant. The pie has 30 fat
grams ; wherein, the peanut butter has 6 fat grams.
These differences have important consequences for dieters.

The book is well worth the price charged for purchasers
who intend to apply the contents dispassionately. The reader
who gave this book a poor rating based upon frozen foods
is in error. First, we should have a minimal amount of
frozen foods because fresh foods tend to preserve the
nutrient value.

I know that others have rated this as a book of things that you could get from the backs of packages, but you have to see the book to appreciate the information involved in producing this informative item. My wife just developed diabetes, and this book is VERY useful in information that we can use for carbs, sugars, and calories. Even as a general interest book of curiosity, it can be very useful and helpful. It has helped us so far in many ways. I recommend this book to others that have health or food limitations. Very well done! This is the third updated book that we have purchased fris the same author...Thank You!

I downloaded the Kindle Edition and was surprised to find that the book is unsearchable. It seems that the book is nothing more than image copies of the original book which makes it unusable. I have bought the paperback version in the past and found it to be useful.

At least this food counter has carbs,protein, fat and calories listed--unlike some others. Still way too much space taken up with packaged foods that already have these listings on the packages. Just takes up space and makes it harder to find what I'm looking for.

The Kindle version appears to be a PDF; the font-size for the data can't be changed and the data is unsearchable. I probably would not have bought it had I known that.

Also, when the screen is rotated, there's no option to zoom to page-width.

In my opinion, this is not a very good fit for the Kindle and I would definitely return it if I could.

Very good book for counting calories and carbs. Highly recommend it especially to diabetics.