Feature Request - Food Logging: Filters for the database search

foofon

I have been an intermittent member since 2017 and feel the biggest bugbear that drives me to fall off the wagon is the lack of ease with daily food logging.

Firstly I’d like to say - this is not just MFP daily food logging is frustrating and time consuming. MFP has come along way since I first started using it, I appreciate they are trying to streamline the manual food logging as much as they can.

My request is, can we have some filters when searching the food database so that we can choose to filter a measurement type we prefer to use. For example; uncheck items listed in cups or oz or measurements (I) don’t tend to use.

Despite having your preference saved in your profile this doesn’t come in when searching foods as you are accessing a growing database. I have seen some helpful suggestions to use local food labels and supermarkets if it’s a country based measurement. But if you don’t buy packet foods, brands and buy most of your groceries from the market or a local veg box delivery service this doesn’t really apply. I think having these filters will help to speed up the time for food tracking overall.

yirara

I'd so love this! Problem is that MFP is not really reading along in the forum as it's a user forum. You could send them an email. I have no idea whether they respond and how.

foofon

I’ve actually just realised I didn’t post this in the features section. Doh! I’ll put a copy in there and see if it goes voted on

cmriverside

I'm not sure why you're not able to find the entries you want...when you click on a food it will have a drop-down menu of portion options (like, cup, ounce, gram, each, etc.)

Once you use a food, it goes into your "Recents" list on that meal in your "Add Food" page. Then it stays there, making it super easy to find again. That IS the FILTER.

springlering62

My personal wish is that there were a way to “favorite” foods.

If I travel for longer than a couple of weeks, or don’t log a food if it’s out of season or out of stock for a while or whatever (cherries, pomegranates, store brand cottage cheeses) I have to find my entries all over again.

It’s maddening.

I get that I could probably jerry rig it by saving a favorite food as a “meal” but that clutters up my meals list, which is already crowded.

cmriverside

springlering62 wrote: »

My personal wish is that there were a way to “favorite” foods.

If I travel for longer than a couple of weeks, or don’t log a food if it’s out of season or out of stock for a while or whatever (cherries, pomegranates, store brand cottage cheeses) I have to find my entries all over again.

It’s maddening.

I get that I could probably jerry rig it by saving a favorite food as a “meal” but that clutters up my meals list, which is already crowded.

That is also on your Add Food page...at least on the web version - there is a toggle/tab to "Frequent."

I do have a little trick I use though - I have a rotating number of foods I use every week, probably more than a hundred. I have them mentally separated into the meal slots that I would most likely categorize them in ...this is hard to explain...but, for instance, I know I can find oats and eggs in "breakfast" so if I eat them for (say) dinner, I still log them in breakfast because I know I can find them quickly in that meal slot. Breads and cheeses and deli meats are in "Lunch." Pasta, rice, soup, meat I have to cook like chicken and shrimp are in "Dinner." I have one meal slot designated, "Snacks, drinks, and midday food" and one meal slot for "After Dinner." All dessert foods go in "After Dinner" regardless of when I eat them.

Not sure that makes sense.

I get what you're saying though. It would be nice to be able to create that list myself with a check box.

Lietchi

cmriverside wrote: »

springlering62 wrote: »

My personal wish is that there were a way to “favorite” foods.

If I travel for longer than a couple of weeks, or don’t log a food if it’s out of season or out of stock for a while or whatever (cherries, pomegranates, store brand cottage cheeses) I have to find my entries all over again.

It’s maddening.

I get that I could probably jerry rig it by saving a favorite food as a “meal” but that clutters up my meals list, which is already crowded.

That is also on your Add Food page...at least on the web version - there is a toggle/tab to "Frequent."

I do have a little trick I use though - I have a rotating number of foods I use every week, probably more than a hundred. I have them mentally separated into the meal slots that I would most likely categorize them in ...this is hard to explain...but, for instance, I know I can find oats and eggs in "breakfast" so if I eat them for (say) dinner, I still log them in breakfast because I know I can find them quickly in that meal slot. Breads and cheeses and deli meats are in "Lunch." Pasta, rice, soup, meat I have to cook like chicken and shrimp are in "Dinner." I have one meal slot designated, "Snacks, drinks, and midday food" and one meal slot for "After Dinner." All dessert foods go in "After Dinner" regardless of when I eat them.

Not sure that makes sense.

I get what you're saying though. It would be nice to be able to create that list myself with a check box.

Problem is that foods drop out of the frequent list quite quickly. I have the same issue with foods I eat seasonally or only once in a few months, I have to look for them all over again, or start searching my food diary day by day for the last time I ate that food, to copy it.

Totally agree on the unit filter too, for some foods you get a long list of results and opening every single option to check the available units is a pain.

My diet is too varied throughout the year to only use the frequent foods suggestions.

cmriverside

Lietchi wrote: »

cmriverside wrote: »

springlering62 wrote: »

My personal wish is that there were a way to “favorite” foods.

If I travel for longer than a couple of weeks, or don’t log a food if it’s out of season or out of stock for a while or whatever (cherries, pomegranates, store brand cottage cheeses) I have to find my entries all over again.

It’s maddening.

I get that I could probably jerry rig it by saving a favorite food as a “meal” but that clutters up my meals list, which is already crowded.

That is also on your Add Food page...at least on the web version - there is a toggle/tab to "Frequent."

I do have a little trick I use though - I have a rotating number of foods I use every week, probably more than a hundred. I have them mentally separated into the meal slots that I would most likely categorize them in ...this is hard to explain...but, for instance, I know I can find oats and eggs in "breakfast" so if I eat them for (say) dinner, I still log them in breakfast because I know I can find them quickly in that meal slot. Breads and cheeses and deli meats are in "Lunch." Pasta, rice, soup, meat I have to cook like chicken and shrimp are in "Dinner." I have one meal slot designated, "Snacks, drinks, and midday food" and one meal slot for "After Dinner." All dessert foods go in "After Dinner" regardless of when I eat them.

Not sure that makes sense.

I get what you're saying though. It would be nice to be able to create that list myself with a check box.

Problem is that foods drop out of the frequent list quite quickly. I have the same issue with foods I eat seasonally or only once in a few months, I have to look for them all over again, or start searching my food diary day by day for the last time I ate that food, to copy it.

Totally agree on the unit filter too, for some foods you get a long list of results and opening every single option to check the available units is a pain.

My diet is too varied throughout the year to only use the frequent foods suggestions.

Yeah, I think some of the other food tracking database sites have Favorite lists.

I don't use the Frequent ones here..I just use mostly "Meals" or the "Recents." Unless I buy some new food I don't have to look stuff up anymore. I mean, a couple of the meal slots hold 100 entries in "Recents" and the other ones hold (as far as i can tell) 75 foods. So what is that...550 foods? No one is eating more variety than I do, I don't think. I mean, there are only so many foods!

I eat mostly whole foods, so the list is big enough for me. "Meals" is by far my most useful way to save food.

springlering62

iOS app doesn’t offer frequent foods. 😥

Although there’s easily a possibility I’ve overlooked something glaringly obvious, so hoping someone has figured it out.

Lietchi

This is what it looks like in Android, no idea what iOS is like.

Search view, with a button to edit the preferences:


The options:

springlering62

But there’s no way to save the food there as a favorite?

It’s going to come up automatically when I type the first few letters of the food.

Foods drop after two or three weeks, unless repeated?

Lietchi

Two, three weeks? That seems very short, I think it's longer. I just tested the list recent foods specifically for breakfast and I'm seeing items from months and months ago and the list seems endless, a few hundred I'm guessing.

yirara

springlering62 wrote: »

But there’s no way to save the food there as a favorite?

It’s going to come up automatically when I type the first few letters of the food.

Foods drop after two or three weeks, unless repeated?

Yeah, sounds about right.

springlering62

@lietchi tbh I do t think there’s any rhyme or reason.

A few random foods I ate only once, still populate my database.

Stuff I eat every. single. day. and have for the past three or four years, if I go out of town and don’t have access to it, I have to re-find the entry when I get home.

For example, last time I visited Germany, both brands of cottage cheese I eat two or three times a day, vanished by the time I got home two and a half weeks later. But the German soft tub cheese I bought to tide me over? It’s still in there and gets randomly suggested, two or three months later.

I eat pomegranate and cherries seasonally., like someone else mentioned, and have to look them up every year.

Another oddity is, if I select cottage cheese it suggests what I usually eat with it (balsamic, blueberries and Grape Nuts, and all my pancake ingredients) , it’ll suggest my usual quantity. I just select which ones I want to add.

Very convenient.

But if I select A different ingredient “first”, it will give me totally different quantities. Every rare once in a while I’ll eat a serving and a half of cottage cheese, to finish a tub or because I have extra calories to use up. That 1.5 servings randomly shows up. I have to catch those entries because that’s an extra 45 calories.

Not a whopping error, but some days I’m short calories and scrambling to find room for a snack. I’m like 🤦🏻‍♀️ so that’s where my missing calories went.

I’m so used to the vagaries of food selection I automatically review and correct, but still, in a perfect world…….it wouldn’t auto-suggest the .25 servings of cottage cheese that go in pancakes, when I’m gunning for a larger midafternoon snack. That quantity should be confined to the recipes/meals area where it came from, if that makes sense.