Diet Sleuth - 6.0.0

It's the best program out there for tracking this stuff on the Mac, but unfortunately:
a) the $35 price only includes one year of updates and if you unwittingly download the latest version after that year is over, the program goes back to demo mode until you pony up. In other words, it stops working.
b) version 4.5.2 is sloooooooooow. Much worse than previous versions. Double-click on a food to add it to your daily totals and the pie chart redraws. And redraws. And redraws. And redraws. And redraws. You have to watch it recalculate your daily totals five times before you can even enter a food, and this happens every. single. time. The pull-down menus used to be a little bit laggy but now it's just gotten ridiculous.
c) the un-Mac-like interface is all still there. (Command-A = add to favorites) Entering the nutrition information for new foods is totally unintuitive.
d) it still crashes if you open your log file while the program is open.
e) the new "personal info" area looks interesting but crashes every time I try to open it.

All that said, I still use it every day and I still recommend it until something better comes along (ideally something that can import the years of custom foods I've entered along the way!) It takes a bit of getting used to but it works, albeit frustratingly slowly now. Earlier versions are a little quicker than 4.5.2. The developer does respond to emails, so there's hope for the future.

I'm a sometimes-user of Diet Sleuth and as I recall it IS possible to search for words. It's not the greatest search function, by any means, and it may be among the slowest, but you can search for keywords. My gripes are related, though. It is grindingly tedious to search for and input items for a day's meals, even after assiduously compiling favorites. My experience is that I am capable of applying Diet Sleuth to help me track calories or carbs or whatever for about one month after which I find it has become part of the stuff that my dieting resistance is made up of, rather than an aid. In short, it becomes more trouble than it's worth in about 30 days. It should get easier, but it doesn't. I'm afraid fixing this would require not only a major reprogramming but in some ways a rethinking of how the database is accessed (enable deleting of unused records, for one thing), and of how dieters approach food and meals.

To be fair to this company, I tried their software one more time (I had made a negative comment below). The same main problem exists with this software: who counts calories without taking exercise into account? If I am on a 1500 calorie diet and I eat 3000 calories without exercising, that is a bad day. If I eat 3000 and run 15 miles, that is a good day. This software makes no distinction and that is a major flaw.

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#1 sure takes a long time to initiate the first time. Can't there be any compression, it's all text. 4 MB text files?

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#2 Good looking interface but it's clunky... Can't use arrow keys to scroll through the items. The food specs won't change that way, only if you click on each item. Some items don't have any specs at all.

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#3 Pretty extensive list of food.

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so-oooo easy to learn. A++++ Congratulations on a great program. I have just spent the weekend evaluating several diet software programs including: Diet Sleuth, Cybernetic Dietician, LogIT, FrenchDietX 101, and Health Engage. For my purposes yours was the best. It has a great interface with Mac OS X. I am using it for medical research to track the diet of individuals with polycystic kidney disease. The values of sodium, potassium, phosphorus, protein, magnesium are very important. Plus you have a separate category for herbs, drinks such as water, so necessary when following kidney disease. I particularly enjoy adding a recipe and diet sleuth will calculate the elements contained in it. I like being able to add new foods and especially the daily notes which can be written in the narrative for keeping track of changes in my health. Great program!!