Abstract
We have developed a prototype microcomputer system which will help a nutritionist classify foods into categories suitable for nutrient composition analyses. This system has been developed on an Apple II microcomputer in the Pascal language. It presently can handle 2300 different codes on one 5-1/4 inch floppy disk. In tests using fictitious foods, an untrained food coder who was familiar with the Apple II coded 25 foods in 9 ± 1 minutes. Manual coding of the same number of real foods takes approximately 25 minutes. Error rates in the two systems were similar. It is expected that further development of the system will permit over 50,000 different pathways to lead to up to 5,000 different codes with an increase in speed and decrease in error rates compared to manual food coding methods.