Fats, Cals and Carbs are way off on the Fitness Pal tool!

MsTwister82

I just created a new user profile and am back trying to get healthy. I entered my food for the day and it did not register my apples or my berry smoothie correctly. For two apples it said 32 calories and 2 carbs, for my smoothie, it gave it 0's across the board. Am I entering it wrong? I don't recall having this issue in the past.

Jeffaronic

Most of the foods have been entered (sometimes incorrectly) by the users of Fitness Pal. I suggest you select at least three of the "apples" from the list of foods and then use the one which appears most reasonable. You will find there is a significant difference in how people list an apple.

maveickmonk

^Yeah I've seen some weird ones so far. Although I've been surprised by both how calorie heavy some foods are that I didn't know before (lunchmeat and cheese), and surprised by how "light" some others are (Who knew you could have a hotdog and bun for 380cal???)

What I do is pick a few, and chose the most "expensive" entry it gives me, that way, even if I'm wrong, I know the error is in my favor and at worst I'll get a nice calorie "tax return" as far as the results I'm seeing.

sodakat

There ARE accurate entries. You just need to pick them. Most foods have a non-asterisked entry and that is the one you should select.

For example, search under "apples - raw" and you will see an entry with skin and one without. You choose whichever way you are eating the apple then click on the down arrow in the nutrition box to choose the serving size. I always choose 100g because I weigh every apple. If I eat an entire apple it will often weigh about 195 grams, so I change the "1" in the number of servings box to 1.95; if I eat half an apple, I'll change the "1" to .88 or however many grams I'm eating.

Most produce is listed in basically the same way, like "oranges - raw, navels" or "potatoes - red, flesh and skin baked".

An example for finding the correct bacon entry would be "pork - cured, bacon, cooked, pan-fried".

Any time you have food that comes in a package it will be much faster to scan the bar code than look up the food in order to find the correct, non-asterisked entry.

It can take a while to become familiar with the database entries.

Something I do when I just can't find an asterisked entry is do a google search asking "calories in X". This usually results in a USDA calorie amount based on weight. Then I compare the entries I find in the MFP database and select the most accurate.

3dogsrunning

maveickmonk wrote: »

^Yeah I've seen some weird ones so far. Although I've been surprised by both how calorie heavy some foods are that I didn't know before (lunchmeat and cheese), and surprised by how "light" some others are (Who knew you could have a hotdog and bun for 380cal???)

What I do is pick a few, and chose the most "expensive" entry it gives me, that way, even if I'm wrong, I know the error is in my favor and at worst I'll get a nice calorie "tax return" as far as the results I'm seeing.

I had a Top Dog BBQ (the bigger one) ht dog and bun today for 380. 160 for the dog, 120 for the bun.

sushisuzi2

Oh, so many users add only calories not all the details. Bums me out, so I add my own stuff manually as much as I can and verify with websites. If something only lists carbs and not fiber, and I know it should have it, I rescan the item.

MsTwister82

I went back and kept choosing different ones until I got it correct. WHEW! You do have to go with name brand, big brands or the more expensive, that is absolutely correct. Thank you to all!

sweetaj

I love the scanner function for entering foods when i can!