FDA FOOD LIST
Instructions for Preparing list for use in the Strides Program

The most recent revision of the FDA Food list can be downloaded from the FDA Web site as a Excel Spreadsheet.  This spreadsheet has approximately 53 columns of data and as many rows as it has foods (in Revision 24 there are 7908 rows). This spreadsheet needs to be revised to strip out unused information, put items in places expected by the Strides program and to improve the descriptions of the foods, portion sizes and related calories to make them more user friendly and appropriate.

To use this database efficiently in the Strides program it needs to be reduced in size to display only the needed information.  The needed information and its location in the Database are listed below with the location for the Strides version of the database.

StridesName  FDA Name   Strides Column      FDA Column

Code		NDB_No		Col A		Col A
FoodName	Shrt_Desc		Col B		Col B
Portion 	GmWt_Desc1		Col C		Col AX
Calories	Energ_Kcal		Col D		Col D
NewName					Col E
New Portion				Col F
New Calories				Col G

The easiest way to reorganize the FDA DataBase into the Strides Spreadsheet is to open the FDA Database spreadsheet and do the following steps.

1.  Delete the contents of Col C, leaving this blank.

2,  Cut the full Column AX and paste it into Col C.

3.  Delete all columns begining with Column E.

4.  Save the spreadsheet with the name "FDAfood.xls"  When done, this spreadsheet will need to be saved in a tab delimited text file format and then have all the quote marks replaced with blanks (explained below).

5.  Enter into Column E a more user friendly foodname than the Short         Description found in Column B. The Strides program will use any Food Name found in Column E of the FDAlist file, instead of the one found in Column B.

6.  Enter into Column F a different Portion Size than the one found in Column C. The Strides program will use any Portion Size found in Column F of the FDAlist file, instead of the one found in Column C.

7.  Enter into Column G a different Calorie Count than the one found in Column D. The Strides program will use any Calorie Count found in Column F of the FDAlist file, instead of the one found in Column D.

8.  Save the spreadsheet with the name "FDAfood.xls".

9.  Save the spreadsheet in the tab delimited text file format using the 'Other Format' option in the 'Save As' command in Excel.  Agree to let the spreadsheet loose formating information.  Then close this file.

10.  [REMOVING THE QUOTES]  Open the file with WordPad.  Use the Edit>Replace option (ctrl H).  Enter a Quote Symbol (") into the Find What: blank.  Make sure the Replace With: is completely empty.  Then click 'Replace All'.  This will remove all Quote marks.

11.  Save the file as FDAfood.txt and place it in the Strides\Programs\data  folder.

     