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Database-diving using excellent Excel tricks Nutrition-database hacks help you get the right info out of your menu database

Paige Einstein, director of nutrition, Syndigo/Nutritionix, spoke at the March 2019 annual conference of the National Restaurant Association’s Nutrition Executives Study Group. She offered restaurant nutritionists a few easy Excel tips to get the information they need from their menu databases. Einstein kindly shares the best of the Excel functions below! Are you a visual learner? Watch video clips of these Excel functions being performed. (If any problem accessing, contact Beth Lorenzini, National Restaurant Association, blorenzini@restaurant.org) Paige’s Excel hacks: EXCEL HACK #1: Check your menu database for accuracy. Use Excel’s “less than” or “greater than” functions. 1

EXCEL HACK #2: Find menu items that meet a specific criteria. Use Excel’s “IF” function. ................................. 2

EXCEL HACK #3: Find menu items that meet multiple criteria. Combine Excel’s “IF” and “AND” functions. ...... 4

EXCEL HACK #4: Search for key ingredient or allergen terms. Use Excel’s “ISNUMBER” and “FIND” functions. 6

EXCEL HACK #5: Take it to the next level. Combine IF, ISNUMBER, and FIND. ..................................................... 7

EXCEL HACK #1: Check your menu database for accuracy. Use Excel’s “less than” or “greater than” functions. Scan your database for info that’s either nutritionally improbable or impossible with a few simple Excel tricks.

Your challenge: See if any menu item in your database has a value for saturated fat that’s greater than the value for total fat. (If it does, there’s a mistake in your database.) The hack: Use a simple “less than” formula to spot-check inaccuracies in your Total Fat and Saturated Fat values. How to do it: Use Excel’s “less than” formula to check that your “E” column value (for saturated fat) is less than your “D” column value (for total fat). Tip: Excel search will return a result of TRUE if saturated fat is less than total fat and FALSE if it is not. Use Excel’s conditional formatting to highlight cells that contain the text FALSE Example In this example, your formula (E2<D2) generates a “FALSE” result for your Crispy Chicken Melt sandwich – the only item where saturated fat exceeds total fat. You can pull the cursor down to highlight all of columns E and D and the formula will find all instances where E is greater than D.

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The result:

EXCEL HACK #2: Find menu items that meet a specific criteria. Use Excel’s “IF” function.

Your challenge: See which of your menu items meet your restaurant’s “low calorie” criteria (<600 calories).

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The hack: Excel’s “IF” function is your friend! Done the right way, you can pull a ton of great information from your database. How to do it: Write an Excel formula that essentially says: “If I encounter this scenario, I will return the specified result. If not, I will return the other specified result.” In Excel-speak, the formula is: =IF(logical test, value if true, value if false). Tip: Be sure to enclose the text, such as Low Cal, in quotation marks and follow with quotation marks with no text between them to leave the cell blank if the value fails to meet the criteria). If you drag the cursor to highlight the entire B column, any cells with calories below 600 will show up as Low Cal. Example In this example, use the formula =IF(B2<600,”Low Cal”, ""). This formula translates to: If the calorie value of the food item in the cell B2 is less than 600, return the text “Low Cal.” If it isn’t less than 600, leave the cell blank.

Result: The result is clear identification of all menu items that meet all your low-calorie criteria.

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EXCEL HACK #3: Find menu items that meet multiple criteria. Combine Excel’s “IF” and “AND” functions.

Your challenge: You want to find which items meet your restaurant’s “healthy choice” criteria of less than 600 calories, less than 1500mg sodium, and less than 5g saturated fat. The hack: You can do this with a single Excel IF AND statement. How to do it: Build on Excel Hack #2, above (the IF statement) and this time, add “AND” statements. Example In the example below, the formula =IF(AND(B2<600,G2<1500,D2<5),"Healthy Choice","") results in a clear list of items that meet your “healthy choice” criteria.

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Result: You’ll get a clear list of items that meet your “healthy choice” criteria:

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EXCEL HACK #4: Search for key ingredient or allergen terms. Use Excel’s “ISNUMBER” and “FIND” functions.

Your challenge: You want to generate a list of the products in your database that contain high fructose corn syrup. The hack: Use a combination of Excel’s “ISNUMBER” and “FIND” functions to search for any item that contains high fructose corn syrup. How to do it: This Excel formula is written as follows: =ISNUMBER(FIND(“text you are looking for”,cell)).

Example The formula below: =ISNUMBER(FIND("High Fructose Corn Syrup",A2)) will search all your ingredient statements. Any ingredient statement that contains the phrase “High Fructose Corn Syrup” will return a result of TRUE. If not, it will return a result of FALSE.

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The result

EXCEL HACK #5: Take it to the next level. Combine IF, ISNUMBER, and FIND.

Your challenge: You want to see which items in your database contain milk (rather than just getting a “True” or False” result). The hack: Combine the IF function with the ISNUMBER and FIND functions to return to get a result that clearly states which items contain milk. How to do it: Combine all these functions in a formula that will yield the result “Contains Milk” for any product whose ingredient statement mentions milk. Here’s the solution:

=IF(ISNUMBER(FIND("Milk,",A2)),"Contains Milk","")

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Example

Result: You’ll get a clear list of items that contain milk:

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