Change 'nutriments' to 'nutrients' in strings file and UI defaults

[scottmmjackson]

I changed only the default and not the symbol names or strings file. Looking for feedback on whether that ought to be done to avoid confusion.

"Nutrients" is a far more common term referring to the various nutritional components of food. Nutriments is most often used to refer to the food itself (as in this company), or in particular to the "four nutriments" in Buddhism which refer to contexts in which food is eaten. Reference.

[davidhealey]

Hi,

I chose nutriment specifically because not all nutrients are nutriments. For example fiber. We may also want to track other nutriments in the future such as water, food additives, colourings, etc.

[scottmmjackson]

@davidhealey I'm not sure I understand the rationale here.

First, I'm not sure "not all nutrients are nutriments" is either true nor relevant, as "dietary fiber" is listed under "nutriments" and would therefore be incorrect.

I can only speak for American English but "nutriments" is essentially never used in this context- we use "nutrients".

It may be that we want to clarify the default locale and provide either en_US or en_GB as the case may be. As it stands it seems we're using American spelling for at least some words:

https://github.com/davidhealey/waistline/blob/master/www/assets/locales/locale-en.json#L9

[davidhealey]

"dietary fiber" is listed under "nutriments" and would therefore be incorrect.

Fiber is a nutriment, it is not a nutrient. It isn't digested and doesn't provide nutrition.

Edit: I just realised the wording of my last post reads like I was saying the opposite :D

[scottmmjackson]

https://www.nal.usda.gov/human-nutrition-and-food-safety/nutrient-lists-standard-reference-legacy-2018

In common American parlance (and as far as I can tell, British parlance too) fiber/fibre is considered a nutrient, and nutriment reads as if a mistake- so much so that I thought it was initially a false-friend mistake by a native French speaker.

It's fine if this is not the kind of change you want to accept but I strongly feel like the pervasive use of the term "nutriment" for what most English-speaking national nutrition authorities consider to be nutrients, and who do not use the term "nutriment" in any context, detracts from user experience.

[davidhealey]

I'll leave this for now. If there is some demand from more users about this I'll revisit it.

[EmilJunker]

If I may add my two cents here, as a non-native speaker I also feel like nutriments sounds a bit odd in this context. I would agree with the sentiment that the term nutrients is more common, but I don't have very strong feelings about this.

[davidhealey]

Hmm, well I guess if the change is only to the front-end anyway then it doesn't really affect anything internally, so why not.