Scanning foods don’t match nutritional labels?

truegemini615

Hi. Has anyone else noticed that the barcodes don’t match the food label when scanning? I’ve done this a few times and it seems that calories on the bag are let’s say 140 but when scanned it’s 150. Carbs on bag say 25 but scanned says 29. Same for fats

I’ve checked on several items and it’s not all one brand.

kami3006

Scanning just pulls up user created entries so you still get the same kinds of errors as with all entries. Some items may be entered wrong, some differ by region and some have changed since the entry was created.

Aaron_K123

MFP's database is user created. When in doubt, go with the package label.

Fflpnari

Ive had this too. Some companies have changed calorie counts and mfp isnt updates. ex my ice cream was 140 cals per half cup, company now changed it to 200 cals per 2/3 cup, mfp still shows the 140 cal serving.
Most of the stuff is pretty acurate.

katphi1618

Even labels are allowed a certain margin of error. I don't remember the % but it's hard to trust them as exact all the time.

Duck_Puddle

I scanned a package of chocolate-peanut butter cookies and it came up as fried boneless pork chops.



As mentioned above, scanning barcodes only provides a shortcut to the same entries someone has already made. So in my case, someone scanned this same barcode and created a database entry for pork. I think my cookies were way tastier but idk.

CarvedTones

I have had some that were even confirmed entries. The most common ones have been store brands and they switch suppliers from time to time. Some products, like dairy items, have regional suppliers for grocery chains.

Piwacket33

Is it possible to augment the database for one's self? For instance, in mapping programs the software will check a local db for a location and if not found, it will then check the global database. I think that would be a nice improvement to this service (I am a software engineer and programmer).

RAinWA

Piwacket33 wrote: »

Is it possible to augment the database for one's self? For instance, in mapping programs the software will check a local db for a location and if not found, it will then check the global database. I think that would be a nice improvement to this service (I am a software engineer and programmer).

For foods I eat frequently I just save them to "my foods" and don't share them with the database. That way I know they are correct.

vaman

For foods I eat frequently I just save them to "my foods" and don't share them with the database. That way I know they are correct. [/quote]

Excellent idea. After all most of us eat the same foods frequently.
The main database has thousands of entries, sadly there are many, many incorrect ones.

truegemini615

Thanks all!

WilmaValley

Great ideas and insights!!!!

dfriar1971

Could we have an integrated OCR for the food label instead of the barcode

grimendale

You can also report incorrect labels and provide correct information. Sometimes, people just got it wrong, and sometimes, the packaging itself changed. I've done that with a few things I use. On the whole, I tend to use a lot of the same foods frequently, so I'll pull entries from previous days that I already know are right and go from there.

cmriverside

grimendale wrote: »

You can also report incorrect labels and provide correct information. Sometimes, people just got it wrong, and sometimes, the packaging itself changed. I've done that with a few things I use. On the whole, I tend to use a lot of the same foods frequently, so I'll pull entries from previous days that I already know are right and go from there.

This is an old thread, but what do you mean by "report incorrect labels"? I mean, yeah, you can click the nutrition data as being inaccurate, but then you fix it yourself (if you want) and it then goes into your MY FOODS. It doesn't change it in the shared system, and no one is monitoring that, it just creates a new item.