How to track more nutrients?

melaclaire
melaclaire Posts: 3 Member
edited April 2022 in Food and Nutrition
Is there a way to track more nutrients and vitamines (like on Cronometer)? Is this available in the full version?
I see I am consistently not getting enough iron and Vit. A and wonder now about other nutrients.
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Replies

  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    MFP is not great for tracking micro-nutrients like vitamins and minerals. Cronometer populates it's own database, MFP does not. MFP's database is crowdsourced from other users and the primary way this is done is by way of food labels. There are many micro-nutrients that are not required to be put on food labels and since they aren't on the label, a user will not enter it into the database.

    In some cases, users only care about the calories...or the calories and macros and just neglect to add other micro nutrition...but in most cases it's because the information is not included on the food label.
  • lynn_glenmont
    lynn_glenmont Posts: 10,093 Member
    cwolfman13 wrote: »
    MFP is not great for tracking micro-nutrients like vitamins and minerals. Cronometer populates it's own database, MFP does not. MFP's database is crowdsourced from other users and the primary way this is done is by way of food labels. There are many micro-nutrients that are not required to be put on food labels and since they aren't on the label, a user will not enter it into the database.

    In some cases, users only care about the calories...or the calories and macros and just neglect to add other micro nutrition...but in most cases it's because the information is not included on the food label.

    Also, for the most part, if they weren't required on U.S. nutrition labels, MFP didn't create a field for them in the database. Even if users know how much phosphorus or selenium is in a given food, there's no way to input that when you're creating a food entry in the database.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,222 Member
    In addition to what the above folks said (with which I agree):

    The food database in MFP premium is identical to the food database in free MFP. (Premium does give you more options about how to display and manage the data in your diary.)

    It's possible to eat in a way that will get vitamin A and Iron to the MFP default goal levels, if you pick the right foods to eat, and the right entries to log them, it seems.** Whether that's worth the effort is a different question.

    If you eat a lot of packaged foods, those will be more dependent on the labeling limitations others mentioned. If you eat more whole foods, and make it a point to pick USDA-based entries, it can happen. I don't think it would be worth revolutionizing way of eating to accomplish that: It would be a tail wagging dog sort of thing, IMO.

    ** I'm saying that based on looking at my own diary/nutrition. I don't eat the way I eat to get a pretty log or nutrition chart, I eat the way I eat because it's how I enjoy eating, though I do prioritize getting decent overall nutrition. I don't target micros specifically, but figure if I eat a boatload of veggies/fruits - which I do by taste preference anyway - fiber and micros will work out just fine. It seems to work. I'm at 102% of Iron averaged over the week, and a kind of ridiculous 178% of Vitamin A. I don't log supplements, just foods.

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