Database accuracy

senor_jeff

Hi all,

A bit of my background first. I've started running since late 2015 to lose weight and have only managed to only lose 2 kg in over a year. I suspect it was because of too much takeaway food on the weekends, as I tend to eat healthy while working.

Anyway I started using myfitnesspal since the 1st April and was shocked to see how much calories a piece of cake has or a coffee with syrup in it, or a packet of biscuits. I immediately cut those items out of my diet and now have managed to lose almost 2kg in 12 days just from this small adjustment.

I was going through the reporting function checking my diet against all the vitamins and noticed that almost everything was way under the required vitamin levels. Not enough Vit a, c, calcium, iron, protein etc. I then went and looked at the days that I was higher in these vitamins to work out which foods give the most benefit.

It was after this careful examination I started to discover things like
Nudie - Nothing but 21 Oranges - Juice (With Pulp), 200 ml - has no vitamin C listed at all?
Tomato and cucumber salad, super high in calcium... really???
If i put in plain coffee with a bit of milk in it, there is a huge variation on the calories this item has, depending what you pick in the list.

Now I'm starting to think how really accurate or inaccurate this database is, and if I should even look further into all my nutritional deficiencies as it might be the case the data is just wrong.

Any thoughts on this? Does any admin clean up this data?

Ready2Rock206

A lot of entries are user added and bad. Sounds like you're also trying to use other people's recipes where you have NO idea what they might have added. Don't use those. Make your own recipes.

For things like your coffee - log the coffee and the milk (or anything else) you add separate - that will eliminate a lot of problems.

annacole94

Things are just user entered. No, the admin of the site does not appear to care.

Micronutrients and vitamins are particularly poorly logged in the database. If you want accuracy, you have to spot check every entry you use. Typically, for whole foods, search the name with "usda" and you'll get a good entry.

malibu927

The database is created by fellow MFP users and prone to errors. Some people only put in the parts (calories and maybe macros) they care about. Others may make up their own numbers. And then there are items that have different calorie counts in other regions. Always verify the numbers against nutrition labels or the USDA's own database. Also, try to ignore any entries like those for coffee with milk or the tomato/cucumber salad. Log the amount of milk you use and the coffee if you choose to (with so few calories some people omit adding it in). If you make the salad yourself, log each ingredient separately or use the recipe builder. Obviously if it's something from a local deli that you can't really get an accurate count for, you can go ahead and choose an entry you believe best fits.

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senor_jeff

Wow.. thanks for the super quick replies. I'll be sure to log items separately now and use the phrase USDA. I hope my breakfast cereals are accurate. That would be a big pain to enter all those ingredients in separately

senor_jeff

Just curious, but is it possible to clear the history for all the past choosen foods when I pick Add food, so I can start afresh with the usda items only?

malibu927

Only to delete every instance you've logged them. You can't delete directly from Recent Foods.

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ccsernica

Sometimes I create an entry based on partial nutritional information. For instance, I might pick something up from the steam table at Whole Foods, where calories per serving might be given but nothing else.

If you have a label in front of you, it's always worth it to verify the nutritional information the first time you use a database entry.

senor_jeff

Thanks all.. much appreciated for your help

livingleanlivingclean

I never use mfp for micro nutrients - so many entries don't include the info. I'll admit, if I enter a food I don't include it either for a couple of reasons - firstly, I don't care, secondly, if our food labels show the amount, it's as a % of the RDI, which i don't think is the same info mfp asks for.