Recommended food tracking apps?

I am a fitness trainer. I use a tracker that tracks weight and calories. But I would like to find a tracker that will help regulate the consumption of my calories and advise how to distribute them. During work I often have to advise people of a diet for weight loss. It would be nice if the tracker could tell the user - you exceeded your calorie intake, use this diet . Or, for example, a user could get advice on nutrition or exercise at his request. If you already know such a tracker - please advise me.

For timestamped food tracking, check out @QuantifiedBob’s meal tracking app. It’s still missing some features like data export, but it’s getting there…

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I use a very expensive diet advice app called RP Diet. It stands for Renaissance Periodization. They have three diet types: fat loss, muscle gain, and maintenance. They tell you exactly how many macros to eat for each meal, and it allows allows you to pick from a (fairly finite) list of foods. You cannot scan your own, etc. It’s really not a tracker. But it will tell you how much egg whites to eat to meet your goal of 25g protein. Screens for meals look like this:

The really cool thing it does–it changes macro/food recommendations based on your goals. And you can see what it’s going to do on its “progress” screen. I’m trying to lose weight, so mine looks like this:

If the weekly average of my weights don’t stay at or below the green line, the app cuts my macros :slight_smile: So that’s my favorite diet advice app.

(The app is new. They used to have “paper templates,” so I’ve used them for a about a year. I’ve done a cut, gain, and maintenance and now cutting again. I think RP is great. I use their powerlifting and physique templates as well. No app for those yet!)

But the RP Diet app really doesn’t track. I recently started using Cronometer to track, but, in some ways, MyNetDiary might be more what you want. Here’s a screen shot of what I think you might like in MyNetDiary:

I thought you might like the green bar around the apple. That shows how close I am to my target. You can include (or not) the calories you burned exercising if you have linked to an exercise tracker. It shows nice calorie totals by meal, and you can get all sorts of nutrient info as well. But–its advice is purely in the form of static articles. It has a kind of related feature–you can scan items and it will recommend a “better” option. I chose the diabetes version because I was using it to track my blood glucose, so I’m not sure if the standard version has that feature. It’s meant to be used while you’re shopping.

(And, oh, why can’t I resize these?? In preview they look fine!)

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bob’s app not available on ggl play

So what is the best food tracking app if I want export with time stamps? Android. Lookup based on UPC barcode but can select via search in which ranks higher items user uses alot. Works fine offline. No recurrent payment for, critical to me, features. Allows notes and quantity in servings, grams volume. Includes nutrition in export. Would be nice if it could be read directly by zenobase or exist.io or the like. Allow custom data base entries even if they are not uploaded. Analysis, recommendation, summary etc not useful to me though others want it. Now I use mysymptoms though it has no nutrition info at all.

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I can not find the timestamps in mynetdiary android nor the export

Most food tracking apps have the ability to retrieve nutritional info via text search, barcode scan or recent favorites. Barcode search never works offline but typing search and ‘favorites’ do. Fewer work offline. Only a handful of apps have time stamping.

I have three options. Write code over OFF or USDA database using Automate, IFTTT or Waistline. The database may be out of date but it will never cease to exist, require internet or spy on user. Unfortunately this will require lots of work.

Pay 40$ per year for mfp. Chronometer without offline logging is useless in too many cases. I would be willing to pay 40$ for this product but not ‘per year’ partly because its guaranteed to change or even die at some point. So no, not really.

Or just use bitesnap. This would be the easy choice, but OFF database is way more detailed and I am afraid of Terminator models with better food identification algorithms.

‘y’ means Yes, has feature. ‘n’ means does not. ’ ’ is same as ‘n’. ‘p’ means feature requires membership. ‘w’ means the feature exists but is not as good as a ‘y’. ‘?’ means I do not know.

name; search fave/recent barcode ; offline ; quantity timestamp notes export ; detailnutrition serv.choiceselect customfood ; addwater
SparklePeople; y y y ; ; y n n p ; y n y ; y
-----------looseit; y y y ;y; y n n y ; w n ? ; p
------fooducate; y y y ; ; y n n p ; y n y ; n
----cronometer; y y y ; ; y p - p ; y y y ; n
--------fatsecret; y y w ; ; y n n ? ; y y n ; w
–myfitnesspal; y y y ;w; y p - w ; y y y ; y
—eathismuch; w y w ; ; y n ? ? ; w y y ; n
—mynetdairy; y y y ;y; y n n ? ; y y y ; w
------bitesnap; w y y ;y; y y y y ; y y n ; w
glucosebuddy; w y y ; ; ? y n n ; y y n ; n
my diet diary; w y n ;w; y n n ? ; y y y ; y
------MyPlate; y y y ;w; y n n ? ; w n y ; ?
—smartplate; y y y ; ; n n n ? ; n n ? ; ?

openfoodfacts; y y y ; ; n n n y ; y y y ; n most detailed database
has “share” option maybe just export to txt editor and automatically timestamp?
https://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/
waistline calorie tracker FOSS. Exports. unfortunately no timestamp and reduced nutrition details. faves offline.
YAZIO Lifesum nutritionixTrack no timestamp and I am tired. Feels like most of these apps are clones. I guess shuffling the data through 3rd part apps could eventually get it into a csv but researching that is too hard. Apps could queue entries offline then later search.
webmd no longer tracks food?
https://www.choosemyplate.gov/tools-supertracker discontinued

I think I got every app on android and a few online.
oops. HealthWatch 360 no timestamps.
People at openfoodfacts suggested cc calorie counter but CC does not have timestamps nor does it have much nutritional detail or exporting. Also nutrition by curlybrace and https://github.com/vrublack/TacoShell.

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Hey, just letting you know the app is available (once again) on Google Play:

Sorry for the inconvenience!

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Does your app: Export? Work offline? Track micronutrients? Timestamp? Search using barcode?

@rain8dome9 Wow thank you for that list!

MyNetDiary does have timestamps. I may have bought the “diabetes tracker” version. You do have to upgrade to “Max” to get the export. But when you do that, you can export data.

It also has a decent apple watch interface, which is unusual, I think. Not so important to me, but kinda cool.

If User forgot to log a snack at the time U ate it. Can User edit timestamps in app? Could you show a few lines of export? Max Membership is 10usd per 3 months or 40 usd per year just like mfp.

From https://www.mynetdiary.com/faq.do

Wearable Fitness Trackers

MyNetDiary provides very robust and comprehensive sync with Fitbit, Garmin and Withings. We are adding Misfit in the nearest future. As MyNetDiary can track food time, it can send more accurate food information to them than other diet apps. When compared to MyFitnessPal, MyNetDiary sends all foods, all nutrients (not just summaries), and also it properly timestamps them. Once you setup the link, you won’t have to do anything else, no sync buttons to push, no apps to launch, the sync will be automatic. Your MyNetDiary mobile app will be getting the information, too.

More than four meals?

MyNetDiary tracks up to four meals - breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks.

If you eat more meals and would like to track them, you can do this by turning on Track Time option in MyNetDiary settings. You would be able to keep time of each food, so if you have several snacks a day, they’ll have different timestamps.

Daily reports will show snacks grouped separately based on timestamps, in-between main meals. Also, the iPhone app will show snack carbs separately grouped if you have “Show Carbs” option on.

I use Yazio for quite some time now. I searched for a good app to start tracking and I stuck with this one because it seemed easy to use. It has all the features I need: bar code scanning, great database, meal plans and recipes. Data export is no problem. Can’t do without it now :thumbsup:
I also synced my fitbit, so all activities are logged, as well. Comparing to other apps I find Yazio also very accurate. Adding food and meals is no problem and the interface is very clear. Definitely recommended: https://www.yazio.com/en


This particular links to the dataset they came up with which is much more thorough than my own.

EDIT: all following posts by me have a dataset.

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The purported best seven but thoroughly explored. 2019

"
features were compared with the domains in an integrated behavior change theory framework: the Theoretical Domains Framework.

App features varied considerably, yet all of the apps had features consistent with Beliefs about Capabilities and thus have the potential to promote self-efficacy by helping individuals track their diet and progress toward goals. None of the apps allowed for tracking of emotional factors that may be associated with diet patterns. The presence of behavior change domain features tended to be weakly correlated with greater usability, with R2 ranging from 0 to .396. The exception to this was features related to the Reinforcement domain, which were correlated with less usability.

Comparing the apps with the USDA reference for a 3-day diet, the average differences were 1.4% for calories, 1.0% for carbohydrates, 10.4% for protein, and -6.5% for fat. "

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2016

Results

Of the 23 popular apps included in the review 16 were free (70 %), 15 (65 %) addressed weight control, diet and PA combined; 19 (83 %) allowed behavioural tracking. On 5-point MARS scales, apps were of average quality (Md = 3.2, IQR = 1.4); “functionality” (Md = 4.0, IQR = 1.1) was the highest and “information quality” (Md = 2.0, IQR = 1.1) was the lowest domain. On average, 10 techniques were identified per app (range: 1–17) and of the 34 categories applied, goal setting and self-monitoring techniques were most frequently identified. App quality was positively correlated with number of techniques included ( rho = .58, p < .01) and number of “technical” features ( rho = .48, p < .05), which was also associated with the number of techniques included ( rho = .61, p < .01). Apps that provided tracking used significantly more techniques than those that did not. Apps with automated tracking scored significantly higher in engagement, aesthetics, and overall MARS scores. Those that used change techniques previously associated with effectiveness (i.e., goal setting, self-monitoring and feedback) also had better “information quality”.


2015

Many more paper reviewing all types of mobile health apps including intolerance and allergy food.

I just realized none of these apps have a meal planning feature. The following have weak nutrition tracking and are focused on meal planning and shopping lists.

I’ve been using Levels Health here. It’s not the most detailed food tracker but it’s been the best for building a forcing function in my life to track. I know I want to see my metabolic responses to meals and look back on the data, so I log them. Otherwise everything else feels too tedious and I don’t do it. Hope this helps.

I used this app before, but I changed phones and couldn’t reinstall it for some reason.
I switched to the smartplate Sergio described, and I recently discovered work time, and the combination is extremely efficient!

I’ve used Cronometer and MyFitnessPal for several months each. MFP was a few years ago, and it got on my nerves with their off-topic “community” and “blog post” cruft, and the database quality was poorer than Cronometer. You could submit food changes, but no idea when they get approved or published. Many foods had ridiculously wrong nutritional values, even if they we marked with the “approved” deal. The entire database seemed user-contributed. Maybe things have changed in the meantime, but I highly doubt it. Back in December, MFP didn’t seem to be in better shape.

I’ve been using Cronometer since January. They have several official food databases including lab-analyzed data, with tens of micronutrients. The interface is focused on food tracking; no community gimmicks. It works on the web as well, which is great for my setup in the kitchen - I have a Pixelbook with a real keyboard, so searching and entering foods is much faster than from a cramped phone. Yazio doesn’t seem to have an online interface.

Cronometer does scan barcodes, but doesn’t work offline. Timestamps are a Pro feature. However, even the basic version allows you to track any biometric you like, so I ended up defining things like “Focus” or “Sleep onset” and have been centralizing my tracking in the app. It can chart and overlay the biometrics, which helps with noticing correlations.

Unfortunately, Cronometer development is extremely slow, and their priorities are rather odd. They chose to implement new splash screens or a dark mode (I guess some users want to spend several hours reading through their food journal at night?), instead of fixing some annoying bugs, or streamlining data entry. Still, the app and website are sufficiently usable and powerful that I haven’t switched away yet (to what?)

I’m a big Cronometer fan, glad that I ditched MFP despite many years of use. If you do serious tracking, the export features are great: it’s much harder to get a CSV file out of MyFitnessPal.

Also, pay for the Pro version: it’s worth it.