Recommend food to eat next based on daily calorie budget, nutrition goals, time of day, etc

danvanderboom

Recommend foods to eat next based on several factors:
- Calorie budget. How many calories have I consumed so far today and how many remain to stay within my calorie goal?
- Time of day. More carbs in the morning, more protein for dinner, etc.
- Nutrition goals. What am I lacking today? What am I close to having too much of?
- Familiar foods. What foods do I normally eat and log in the app? Use settings to decide how often or how many familiar vs unfamiliar foods to suggest. Include recipe suggestions.

danvanderboom

It would also be useful if we could provide feedback on food recommendations.

“No, I don’t like tofu. Stop recommending that.”

Etc.

danvanderboom

Offer a list of recommendations (not just one food item), sorted descending by how well they would meet nutrition goals.

danvanderboom

Let users select a reason for rejecting a recommended food item.
- I don’t like it.
- I don’t have any right now and can’t get it today.
- It’s too expensive.
- I can’t find it in stores near me. Too hard to find.
- I have concerns about its contents.
- I’m allergic to it or something in it.
- I’m tired of eating this. Maybe a different day, or next week.
- The recipe is too elaborate. Too much preparation time required, either for today or in general.

Some of these reasons should prevent them from ever being recommended again. Others can simply pause recommendations for those items for a few days or longer. For hard to find items, MyFitnessPal could follow up with a message/email on tips where it can be purchased, perhaps online through Amazon affiliate links. Some people love cooking and will spend a lot of time preparing meals. Others prefer quick, ready to go meals and snacks including raw fruits and vegetables, salad kits, etc.

snowflake954

Excuse me. How do you plan to handle these recommendations for people who live in other parts of the world? Not all foods are available everywhere. I see this idea as not very practical. And a suggested food is not in my pantry or frig--am I to run out and buy it? What if I live in the country?

AnnPT77

I'm not arguing with suggesting some additional features along these lines, but some of the features you're requesting are already in premium MFP, if I'm understanding you correctly, or something close is there, especially in the phone/tablet version of MFP. I'm commenting because it looks like you're reasonably new to MFP, may not have discovered everything yet, but maybe I'm wrong and just misunderstanding. If so, apologies!

As far as things that are in premium but not free MFP, I doubt that they'll offer those features in free MFP anytime soon, I'm thinking. Most new features get added to the phone/tablet app, not the web, besides.

danvanderboom wrote: »

Recommend foods to eat next based on several factors:
- Calorie budget. How many calories have I consumed so far today and how many remain to stay within my calorie goal?

This is on your diary page in free MFP, web and app, among other places. In some cases, you may be able to use customization features to have it display in different ways.

- Time of day. More carbs in the morning, more protein for dinner, etc.

- Nutrition goals. What am I lacking today? What am I close to having too much of?

You can see this in the Nutrition area of the app, Nutrients tab, day view.

On the web, it's not as straightforward. You can customize your diary to show any 5 nutrients, from a range of options, if the default columns don't meet your needs. The "View Full Report" button at the bottom of the diary will open a page that shows more columns, as well as totals. The Reports tab will show a bar graph of 7 days of any singe reportable nutrient, with a line showing how those measure up your goals.

- Familiar foods. What foods do I normally eat and log in the app? Use settings to decide how often or how many familiar vs unfamiliar foods to suggest. Include recipe suggestions.

Other than the how many familar vs. unfamiliar foods to suggest, the "what do I normally eat and log" seems like it's similar to what recent/frequent foods functions do in both web version and app.

Also, when I start to log a food in the app, it shows me frequently paired foods below that food, after I pick from the search list, before I click the check-mark to log the food. I think that's a feature even in free MFP, but not sure, since I have premium.