tracking whole foods pre-prepared foods

m1ke5264

Hi,

In the UK how can you track the foods that Wholefoods pre-prepare themselves? The majority of bar codes when scanned are not found and not sure how to track these. For example pre-prepared meats, fish and fruits such as: watermelon, Zucchini, pumpkin, sweet potatoes etc. Is there a way to find these foods in my fitness pal or is there a way to add them?

Love wholefoods, but not being able to track a lot of their foods, due to lack of barcode data is frustrating

kimny72

Just search the database manually for the item by typing in the search bar:

Summer squash, raw

Chicken, breast meat, no skin

Sweet potato, raw

If there are other ingredients in a prepared item you may need to guesstimate serving size which can be a problem if they are higher cal items and you eat them often.

Keep in mind, you should still be checking the numbers in database entries you find by scanning an item. The scanner doesn't read the nutrition info off the package, it just reads what the item is, then searches the database for the closest match, just like if you typed the name of the product into the search bar manually.

HeidiCooksSupper

I have to do this every evening because we live in a community where our dinners are made centrally and I have no idea what they include other than they tend toward low fat and low salt. It helps to develop a good idea of how many calories are contained in the basic ingredients.

For example, a cup of cooked white rice is about 200 calories. They tend to throw in some vegetables to flavor the rice. I know that most veggies are less calorie-dense than rice. Therefore I ignore the vegetables and just use an entry for a cup of rice.

Other times, I weigh the item and go with a best guess for a similar item. I then just use a calculator to figure out how many servings I had by dividing the number of grams I weighed out by those for the database serving.

m1ke5264

Thanks @kimny72 . That may also explain why the website diary is slightly out of sync (in terms of total macros) with the app. Will have to double check, especially when it comes to fats

AnnPT77

If you're talking about Whole Foods, the store, and their prepared foods that can have multiple ingredients, do they have the nutrient breakdown on their website? If so, you can add the foods to the MFP database yourself.

m1ke5264

whole foods just responded and sadly for the UK stores they are not yet publishing the nutritional information for products that are prepared in house. Slightly annoying, just means I will have to purchase from stores that list the macros for now.

yirara

You could let them know that you're not buying their products due to this. Maybe that will speed them up.