I do my best to eat well and stay in shape. But as a mom of three, it’s often tough to remember what I’ve eaten today, or even how much water I’ve taken in.
Thankfully, a new slate of food-tracking apps—often powered by computer vision and artificial intelligence—has arrived to fill in the blank spaces in my memory, and nudge me toward a healthier existence. I downloaded a few food-tracker apps, such as BitePal, Hoot, Lose It!, and MyFitnessPal, to better understand the ins and outs of my day-to-day meals. I also talked to nutrition experts to understand what insights these apps can provide, and what their limitations are.
The overarching benefit of food-tracker apps is that they help with awareness of and accountability around what we’re eating, says Meridan Zerner, a registered dietitian in Dallas, Texas. “We’re busy humans, right? Let me pause for a second and give some thought to this and be intentional about what I’m eating,” Zerner says. “Oh gosh, I didn’t have any fiber, or I didn’t have enough iron. OK, well, let me do it differently tomorrow. Let me accommodate because now I’ve got some good feedback.”
Zerner says this type of guidance is good for increasing awareness because people tend to underestimate their food intake by 20 to 50 percent.
Tracking Time
To start, most of the apps had me enter the basics: my current weight and height, and my food intake goals. All of the apps I tried promised to help me either lose weight, maintain my weight, or even gain weight, depending on what I was hoping to accomplish.
Some of the apps required a subscription for basic features like food logging, and the fees were around $35 per year. Other apps let me do the basic food logging for free, but additional services like nutrient tracking or granular coaching advice required a subscription, with prices being as much as $80 per year.
The apps each asked me to enter basic information about my body measurements. Some got more specific, asking about my habits, how active I am, what type of diet I maintain (vegan versus meat eater), and the quality of my sleep. Once I entered all this, each app calculated the approximate calories I need each day.
While I was excited to get that information, I was surprised by the range of calorie recommendations across apps based on my height and weight, which made it hard to know exactly how many calories I really need each day.
“All of these apps, when they’re making calorie recommendations and energy recommendations, are going to have to make those based on an equation,” Zerner says. The equations are likely not able to factor in thing that vary between individuals such as hormones, bone size, and genetics, she says.
“That is one of the advantages of checking in with a registered, licensed dietician,” she says. “We can actually do a resting metabolic rate test to figure out, ‘Hey, this is exactly what your burn rate is.’ Sometimes it follows the predicted equation, and sometimes it doesn’t.”
As my day progressed, I entered the types and amounts of food I ate at each snack or meal, and each app counted the calories and told me how much protein versus fiber I consumed, how many calories in total I had eaten each day, and how many calories I had left to meet my goal weight.
A few of the apps incorporated AI analysis through the phone’s camera, so I could take a photo of my meal, and it would estimate the number of calories per dish. It sounds convenient, but there were significant differences from one app to another. For example, one app calculated a Mediterranean bowl at around 1,000 calories, while another was much higher, so I had to confirm the ingredients and adjust the estimates myself.
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