Finding brands on good search

frontline_freddy

I’m looking for menu items from my local coffee shop chain, Coffee#1 but when I search for it every food with coffee in the name comes up. How do I search for just the brand?

So far hating the app, doesn’t seem to have anything U.K. centric

yirara

The database is largely user soured. That means whatever is in there was added by users. Now, coffee#1 is a rather inconvenient name for searching a database with. if you were to search for items from Tesco then things would look a lot different. Why not try searching for the actual item you're after, and possibly try to add the name of the shop. It's possible that this chain is also too local and nobody actually has added items. Then you can do that yourself. You need to use the website for that though I think.

frontline_freddy

It’s not the obscurity, if I search for specific products like their breakfast bap it comes up. But when searching for a Latte it just ignores the brand and shows me everything that includes “coffee” and “latte”

I haven’t got the patience to be honest, I’m giving up

Redordeadhead

If it's just a latte, selecting a latte from a comparable coffee shop chain is probably close enough.

cwolfman13

frontline_freddy wrote: »

It’s not the obscurity, if I search for specific products like their breakfast bap it comes up. But when searching for a Latte it just ignores the brand and shows me everything that includes “coffee” and “latte”

I haven’t got the patience to be honest, I’m giving up

Probably because another user has yet to enter it into the database. MFP doesn't populate the database, other users do.

Just pick a latte from a comparable shop...or just give up if you want...seems pretty ridiculous though over a friggin' latte.

springlering62

I was grilling my local smoothie shop counter lady so I could log their Warrior Bowl. One of the other employees saw me, and said “if you’re using MyFitnessPal, we just added all our products a week or two ago at someone else’s request”.

Why not ask them to do the same, or offer to do it for them in exchange for a free latte?

They should use pretty consistent measurements.

The one other time I tried to log the Warrior Bowl myself, I waaaay over estimated at about 1200 calories, which is too high for me unless it’s pizza. But after realizing it was only about 650, I’m a darn sight more likely to be a repeat visitor. That’s totally doable for something that big, filling, and super delicious.

springlering62

And as far as this:

So far hating the app, doesn’t seem to have anything U.K. centric

refine your search terms. Good grief. I can even find stuff from the Indian and middle eastern groceries with no problem. My daughter is overseas and finds European products with no issues, too, and all the “special” foods in Aldi and Lidl’s fun temporary promo aisles come right up, even though they’re European imports to the US.

Mmmmmm. Marzipan.

BarbaraHelen2013

Also, if lack of ‘UK centric’ content is a make or break issue for you, maybe the internet is not for you! 😉

I’m fairly sure, bearing in mind the recent change to UK laws regarding restaurant menus and calorie counts that, over time, more and more UK specific eateries will pop up all over the MFP database.

I do appreciate that your main complaint is a actually with the slightly odd way the search function works sometimes. However, as you say, your local coffee shop ‘Coffee#1’ (I’m in the UK too and I’ve never heard of it, btw…) does come up with a few items such as your breakfast bap and a bacon bap. They actually appear first in the search… This suggests that nobody has entered the Latte from that venue as yet!

Be a maverick and enter it yourself. Make sure you capitalise and spell it correctly and enter as much detail as is available and it will then come up in future searches. Then you can sit back and know you did another Brit a favour! 😂

KL1887

Coffee#1 nutritional information

Latte semi skimmed milk regular = 84kcal
Latte semi skimmed milk large = 96kcal
Latte whole milk regular = 147kcal
Latte whole milk large = 169kcal


Guidance issued 6 April 2022

yirara

frontline_freddy wrote: »

It’s not the obscurity, if I search for specific products like their breakfast bap it comes up. But when searching for a Latte it just ignores the brand and shows me everything that includes “coffee” and “latte”

I haven’t got the patience to be honest, I’m giving up

well, that's a quick give up! Over a simple latte that's probably comparable to other lattes worldwide.

Expectation management: Yes, the database is user sources. There's no way any company could pull the nutritional information of any obscure chain or shop worldwide out of thin air. If it's not in the database then no user has entered it yet. If you have this latte more regularly, and the shop offers nutritional information then you can enter it yourself. If they don't, which isn't too uncommon in the UK then there's no way this info could be in the database. Chose something similar.

And hey, welcome here. Please do stick around, lose weight, ask when you have questions

AnnPT77

frontline_freddy wrote: »

It’s not the obscurity, if I search for specific products like their breakfast bap it comes up. But when searching for a Latte it just ignores the brand and shows me everything that includes “coffee” and “latte”

I haven’t got the patience to be honest, I’m giving up

I guess if a person wants to give up, that's as good a reason as any.

But making the tool work isn't that tough, really, and there's a big payoff for succeeding at it, IME. Others have suggested easy ways to handle this specific thing - even looked up the calories for you! (One of the things I like about MFP, personally, is how helpful the Community is.)

Best wishes, whatever you decide.