Diet tracking

Tool Infobox
Related topics	Weight tracking
Linked pages on this wiki	Projects (0), People (0)

Engaging in diet tracking is a common practice, for weight-loss but also related to health issues and chronic conditions that require particular diets. A variety of tools try to enable the tracking of food eaten, often attached to databases that enable additional data such as calories, macro/micronutrients and other things.

Types of data recorded by diet tracking tools

What exactly is recorded by the tools can depend on the exact tool used, but frequently recorded information includes:

• calorie intake
• macronutrients: carbs, proteins, fats
• micronutrients: iron, calcium, vitamin D, etc.
• brands and manufacturers
• enjoyment, circumstances, environment surrounding eating

Projects and results from these tools

• Greg Pomerantz tracked the impact of sodium/salt in his diet on blood pressure and other metrics
• Quantified Diabetes did some rigorous tests on the impact of different diets on blood glucose
• Winslow Strong used diet tracking in MyFitnessPal to observe how a low carbohydrate/paleo diet impacted his body

Patients and communities that need these tools

Weight loss is a very common goal. Communities about stomach and liver problems.

Tips and guides to using diet tracking tools

Typically most tools are somewhat self-explanatory after installation. Beyond this, there are some tips and advice on how to consistently track diet:

• Buying a kitchen scale can be useful to accurately track the amounts eaten, in particular if you cook yourself or eat at restaurants that don't have standard food quantities.
• Frequently, people engaging in diet tracking find that the manual labor of recording their diets becomes too onerous and quit after a few months. DG suggests regularly repeating meals as this a) speeds up the speed of logging data as it will be a 'recently used meal' (e.g. as available in the tool Bitesnap) and b) also can help find patterns in the data.

Table of common diet tracking tools

Table taken from the QS forums.

name	quantity timestamp export	notes	offline	Price & paywall	search fave/recent barcode	detailnutrition serv.choiceselect customfood	water
bitesnap	y y y	y	y	F	w y y	y y n	w
mynetdairy	y y p	y	y	50/y	y y y	y y y	w
Waistline	y n y	y	y	O	y ? n	w w y
cronometer	y p p	p	n		y y y	y y y	n
myfitnesspal	y p w	w	w	40/y	y y y	y y y	y
looseit	y n y	n	y		y y y	w n ?	p
SparklePeople	y n p	n			y y y	y n y	y
fooducate	y n p	n			y y y	y n y	n
fatsecret	y n ?	n			y y w	y y n	w
eathismuch	y n ?	?			w y w	w y y	n
glucosebuddy	? y n	n			w y y	y y n	n
my diet diary	y n ?	n	w		w y n	y y y	y
MyPlate	y n ?	n	w		y y y	w n y	?
smartplate	n n ?	n			y y y	n n ?	?
openfoodfacts	n n y	n		O	y y y	y y y most detailed Database	n

What the columns mean.

• quantity = allows changing quantity
• timestamp = includes detailed to the minute timestamps
• export = allows exporting to file like CSV. Likely missed transfer through 3rd party aggregation.
• Ordered by these three features because they are critical to QS.
• notes = manually entered text field that allows writing down custom information and features. For example how tasty the food was, or where it was bought, or what brand of generic food was purchased.
• offline = does not require connection to internet for some or almost all of their features to work.
• Price = Apps can require continuous payment (such as MFP requiring 40$ per year), one time upfront cost, free and one is even open source. The amount of features walled off from non paying users also varies.
  • O = Open Source
  • F = Free
  • /y = per year.
• search = search by name
• fave/recent = can repeat or rank in search based on popular/recent
• barcode = can find food by scanning barcode (requires online connectivity)
• detailnutrition = Detail of nutrition tracked varies between apps as some track just macronutrients while others go into greater detail.
• serv.choiceselect = Some apps use user contributions to populate their database of foods while others use formal databases like USDA.
• customfood = Some apps do not allow entering custom foods!

What the letters mean.

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

Linked content on this wiki

(The content in the table below is automatically created. See Template:Tool Queries for details. If newly linked pages do not appear here, click on "More" and "Refresh".)

Projects that use this tool

Self researchers who used this tool

We talked about this tool in the following meetings
2021-11-11 Self-Research Chat, 2022-06-23 Self-Research Chat