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Do you trust the MFP food database

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Replies

  • EzRemake
    EzRemake Posts: 128 Member
    Thank god for being able to enter in your own foods, amirite? (I'm wrong, everyone is too lazy)
  • seska422
    seska422 Posts: 3,217 Member
    EzRemake wrote: »
    Thank god for being able to enter in your own foods, amirite? (I'm wrong, everyone is too lazy)
    After trying to use the MFP database, I did end up just entering everything I used into My Foods with customized names and without sharing the items with the database. However, My Foods isn't exactly user friendly and it tends to hide items I've entered.
  • scorpcookie
    scorpcookie Posts: 113 Member
    Nope, I don't trust the numbers in here at all which is why I tend to eat at 100-200 calories below my recommended deficit.
  • 1mumrevolution
    1mumrevolution Posts: 269 Member
    janejellyroll wrote: »
    1mumrevolution wrote: »
    Interesting guys, thanks for the input. I'm in Ireland and no idea what the USDA is though?

    It's the United States Department of Agriculture. Although they have some significant faults, they are a good source for how many calories are in specific foods.

    Thanks for that. Will go have a look at it.
  • RiverMelSong
    RiverMelSong Posts: 456 Member
    No, I double check everything
  • angerelle
    angerelle Posts: 175 Member
    susan100df wrote: »
    Bad bad bad MFP. I am not a programmer but it seems like it wouldn't be too hard to verify entries for us.

    I am a programmer and I don't see how verifying everything would be less effort than prepopulating everything. It seems sometimes recently that the app has tried to check that the calories make sense with the input carbs, protein and fat masses at least.

    I think crowdsourcing is fine, it works really well for things like OpenStreetMap, but I do think MFP could make it easier to edit entries that you find are inaccurate, so that everything could slowly get better over time.
  • CooCooPuff
    CooCooPuff Posts: 4,374 Member
    I like verifying entries on Wal Mart's website. They usually have the nutrient labels in grams.

    I'll also take pictures of the barcodes to compare when I get on the desktop. I get too hectic to do anything while scanning and paying
  • ndj1979
    ndj1979 Posts: 29,136 Member
    No, it is like the cold war and the soviet union, trust but verify ..

  • 100df
    100df Posts: 668 Member
    I have been spending time building the list in my foods so that I just have to change the grams sometimes. It isn't too bad because I eat the same a lot. Next I am going to work on my recipes.

    Inaccurate MFP is better than keeping track with calculator, pencil and paper so I shouldn't *kitten*. Premium is off my Christmas list though.
  • steuartcj
    steuartcj Posts: 132 Member
    Would be a lot easier if people would enter weights and liquid volumes, rather than, 1bowl, 1 piece, 1 glass etc. These entries a waste of space and time. Trust, about 50% of the time at very most.
  • flaminica
    flaminica Posts: 304 Member
    steuartcj wrote: »
    Would be a lot easier if people would enter weights and liquid volumes, rather than, 1bowl, 1 piece, 1 glass etc. These entries a waste of space and time. Trust, about 50% of the time at very most.

    It would save a lot of wasted time and database bloat if the form for creating food entries required more mandatory information, starting with weight in grams or milliliters.
  • lemurcat12
    lemurcat12 Posts: 30,886 Member
    flaminica wrote: »
    steuartcj wrote: »
    Would be a lot easier if people would enter weights and liquid volumes, rather than, 1bowl, 1 piece, 1 glass etc. These entries a waste of space and time. Trust, about 50% of the time at very most.

    It would save a lot of wasted time and database bloat if the form for creating food entries required more mandatory information, starting with weight in grams or milliliters.

    This is true. I think it would be great if you couldn't make an entry public unless it had that kind of information, while you could do whatever for private entries.
  • seska422
    seska422 Posts: 3,217 Member
    lemurcat12 wrote: »
    flaminica wrote: »
    steuartcj wrote: »
    Would be a lot easier if people would enter weights and liquid volumes, rather than, 1bowl, 1 piece, 1 glass etc. These entries a waste of space and time. Trust, about 50% of the time at very most.
    It would save a lot of wasted time and database bloat if the form for creating food entries required more mandatory information, starting with weight in grams or milliliters.
    This is true. I think it would be great if you couldn't make an entry public unless it had that kind of information, while you could do whatever for private entries.
    An impediment to cleaning up the database is that MFP uses the number of database entries as a bragging point. Database bloat is a positive when trying to attract new users even if it's a negative once the users start trying to actually use the database.

    If MFP put sensible restrictions on what information was required in order to share items with the database, rather than just "verifying" them with a flawed automated system, the number of individual database entries would be reduced. The entries would (likely) be more accurate but there would be fewer of them.
  • pie_eyes
    pie_eyes Posts: 12,964 Member
    seska422 wrote: »
    BeerdedBuddy wrote: »
    Yeah I usually double check and I swear by the barcode scanner
    The barcode scanner just pulls user-entered data from the MFP database so it's not a guarantee of accuracy. You still need to check the results against the nutritional info on the container.

    I do its right every time

  • angerelle
    angerelle Posts: 175 Member
    steuartcj wrote: »
    Would be a lot easier if people would enter weights and liquid volumes, rather than, 1bowl, 1 piece, 1 glass etc. These entries a waste of space and time. Trust, about 50% of the time at very most.

    There was a brief time, the other week, when you could only choose from predefined units, at least on the Android app. That seems to have disappeared in the latest update though.
  • flaminica
    flaminica Posts: 304 Member
    What could possibly be wrong with an entry claiming pizza has 13 calories per slice?


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