The Pacific Tracker (PacTrac) Diet Assessment Program

PacTrac is a dietary assessment program that can be used to evaluate dietary data for the Pacific Islands. PacTrac was developed by a USDA/CSREES/Integrated National Research Initiative grant awarded to Dr. Rachel Novotny (no. 2004-35215-14252, CRIS no. 0199107) for the Healthy Living in the Pacific Islands; Healthy Pacific Child Program. Dr. Suzanne Murphy is Co-Investigator.

PacTrac is a modification of the Interactive Healthy Eating Index (IHEI) developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, which was an online interactive dietary-assessment tool for use by the public. We modified the original IHEI software for use in Pacific Island cultures. The revised version is called Pacific Tracker (PacTrac). PacTrac is also available on the Cancer Research Center of Hawai‘i (CRCH) website at pactrac.crch.hawaii.edu. Since the development of this tool, USDA has revised the original Food Guide Pyramid, which is now called MyPyramid. Although several changes have been made to MyPyramid, the food groups and the number of recommended servings are very similiar.

Creation of the PacTrac database has involved the work of the many collaborators of the Healthy Living in the Pacific Islands Initiative, who collected diets and recipes of Pacific Island foods throughout the Pacific Region. The current version of PacTrac includes the Pacific Island foods found in the CRCH’s Food Composition Table (FCT) and recipes from Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI). The current database consists of the CRCH FCT (2,737 foods), plus 85 recipes from Guam, 40 recipes from CNMI, and 41 childrens’ foods from Hawai‘i.