Food Exchange Diet Planner is a tool to be used by food professionals and knowledgeable individuals to create and test diet plans based on the food exchange scheme. To create a dietary plan using the «food exchange diet planner» (this program), one

needs to follow three steps:

(a) Define the average daily energy requirements of the person that the user

wants to create the diet for. The energy is defined in terms of calories and

can also be suggested by the program based on the person's age, height, weight

and activity level.

(b) Define the percentages of the three macronutrients (carbohydrates,

protein and fat) that the diet should consist of. The user can either define

the three percentages by himself/herself or choose a predefined set of percentages

for various diet types (e.g. balanced diet, zone diet, mediterranean diet, etc).

(c) Define the preference for the daily number of servings for three food groups

(diary, fruits and vegetables). This piece of information can be defined to

reflect the personal preferences of the person that the user creates the diet

for and can also be chosen from a set of predefined diet types.

Based on the above information, the program will then calculate the daily number

of servings for the other food groups so that all given constrains are kept.

The program is easy to use and, additionally, it contains a calorie calculator which can be used to compute your daily energy needs based on sex, weight, height and physical activity level.