Nutri Demand: Nutritional Requirements Database for

Abstract

There are a number of nutritional disorders/ diseases endemic in India and around the globe. The aim of this project was to develop nutrient requirements database for Indian population and to acquire, evaluate, compile nutrient requirements for different age groups viz., infant, adolescent and adult, through an easy accessible web platform. To provide protein, energy requirements and recommended daily allowance for different age groups, nutrient utilization pattern software for various activities of human population was developed. The nutrient requirements are individualized by suitable programming which includes data like individual's body weight, height, sex, BMI, etc. and the end product is "User friendly nutritional requirement data retrieval system for each individual/ family at the hands of the consumer". Dynamic computational approach, bio-informatics programming with extensive PERL regular expressions was used to build a server and PHP web-scripting provides simple user interface and dynamic search engine for various daily nutrient requirements for the individual. The database structure designed to enable the user to derive the daily protein, energy, fat, vitamin and mineral requirements by linear programming. The methodology, schema/ structure, database, programming, results will be presented and discussed. This NutriDemand will also enable in the future development of personalized web based nutrition and diet adviser.