I give this book three stars because I don't regret buying it, and I use it frequently.

It has significant flaws, however.

First, it's too big. It's 900 pages long, too thick and bulky, about the size of a fat novel. Not exactly portable. Ideally it should be pocket sized. And a hard or laminated cover, maybe with a ring binding, would be ideal.

While it has the exact listing I'm looking for three quarters of the time, and an approximate listing most of the rest of the time, it has way too many superfluous entries for branded & packaged foods (which as another reviewer notes always have nutrition info on them anyway) and restaurant menus (which while occasionally useful, since some restaurants don't make their nutrition info readily available, is still just gumming up the book with superfluity.)

Another huge peeve I have with it is that while the entries for a particular food can go on for several pages, the serving size information is usually listed only for the very first entry (unless there's an exception) which forces you to flip back - oftentimes several pages - to find the head of the entry. Listing the serving sizes at the top of every new page the item is listed on would be a keen idea.

The measurement units also differ from food to food, sometimes from item to item within the same food category. Cups to ounces to pieces. A little confusing. Standardized measurement would be helpful. Having both the Metric (g/ml) and English (oz/cups) values consistantly listed together would be really great, too. Make it easier and clearer, please.

Anyway, this is still a useful book. In lieu of a better option (something way more portable, concise and consistent) I would still buy it. I didn't do a lot of research when I got it, and still haven't examined alternatives. I use software now to do most of my nutritional counts. This book is just a helpful auxiliary resource.

Foods are conveniently organized alphabetically, but portions are not clear so it's difficult to use when trying to track calories. Example, grapefruit shown by size (diameter) - would be more accurate and convenient if all foods were shown in ounces and if the portion preceded nutritional content on every line.

We have been using this book for about a decade, and appreciate that it does seem to include every morsel of food in a supermarket aisle.

To consider which foods are BEST for our health, we'd really need to compare, well, apples and oranges. But for this purpose the measurements in this book are wonky: one sort of fruit is measured in ounces, for example, and the next in cups! Sure, I can calculate that comparison, but since it's already on the package, I don't need a book to do that. Please save me the calculation--please list EVERYTHING in 1 oz. portions, and I will do the rest. Using exclusively a 1 oz. serving size volume will allow us to see the relative values of all our food choices, and let's be real, this is what you imply in the title of this book, am I right?

At least this food counter has carbs,protein, fat and calories listed--unlike some others. Still way too much space taken up with packaged foods that already have these listings on the packages. Just takes up space and makes it harder to find what I'm looking for.