Despite my best-laid plans to keep healthy snacks in my purse, I often find myself tempted by fast-food restaurants while running errands. No doubt my failure to restock the granola bars in my bag has less to do with this than my love of burgers. So when I first read about NYC’s city ordinance requiring food sellers to display calorie counts next to the prices on all menus, including fast food signs, I thought it was a brilliant idea.

Now, ordinarily I’m not much of one for such governmental interference, but let’s face it: keeping track of the calories in various foods could challenge even a math whiz’s memory. And, sure, even if you don’t live in NYC you can still ask for a restaurant’s nutritional information, but that’s no help when you’re sitting in your mini-van with a cranky kid who’s demanding French fries now. That’s when I tend to just order and hope I’m guesstimating the correct calorie count.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who’s run into such problems, because the folks at Coheso have developed a brilliant little food calorie counter that lets you carry nutritional information for over 35,000 foods in a portable calorie calculator which features a full QWERTY keyboard and number pad. That includes over 500 brand-name items you’d find in the grocery store as well as 250 menu items from restaurants and fast-food places.

As if that’s not already helpful enough, the device not only tracks your calories in, but it serves double-duty as a calorie counter tracking those you burn through exercise, too. With the ability to store up to 12 months of a food diary and enter 1,000 of your own food items’ nutritional info, it’s a powerful aid to weight loss and fitness. And, for you techno-geeks, you can even export your data to your PC to report and chart dieting progress.

Now that’s a brilliant solution to a lazy dieter’s problem!