Scan barcode only for premium?

JenHenderson6227
JenHenderson6227 Posts: 1 Member
in MyFitnessPal Tech Support Questions
I'm new but the scan barcode button only brings up the buy premium option. Is that serious locked behind a pay wall?

Answers

  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,807 Member
    Yes it is, it has been for over a year now.
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,807 Member
    PS: the barcode scanner isn't anything miraculous: it's just another way to search the (crowdsourced) database - no guarantee the result is correct, and with the downside of showing just one result (instead of the manual search where you can open different entries and check which one is correct)
  • Wynterbourne
    Wynterbourne Posts: 2,225 Member
    If you live in the US, yes, it's been behind a paywall for more than a year. That being said, I've been on MFP since 2011 and used the scanner maybe half a dozen times until I discovered that it's not linked to an official entry. As Lietchi said, most of them are user entries. A large chunk of those will be wrong and you will still need to check it for accuracy and it doesn't really save you any time.
  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,052 Member
    edited November 2023
    Lietchi wrote: »
    PS: the barcode scanner isn't anything miraculous: it's just another way to search the (crowdsourced) database - no guarantee the result is correct, and with the downside of showing just one result (instead of the manual search where you can open different entries and check which one is correct)

    I never used it for this reason.

    Jen - here is my standard answer for finding accurate entries:

    Unfortunately, the green check marks in the MFP database are used for both USER-created entries and ADMIN-created entries that MFP pulled from the USDA database. A green check mark for USER-created entries just means enough people have upvoted the entry - it is not necessarily correct.

    To find ADMIN entries for whole foods, I get the syntax from the USDA database and paste that into MFP. All ADMIN entries from the USDA will have weights as an option BUT there is a glitch whereby sometimes 1g is the option but the values are actually for 100g. This is pretty easy to spot though, as when added the calories are 100x more than is reasonable.

    https://fdc.nal.usda.gov

    Use the “SR Legacy” tab - that's what MFP used to pull in entries.

    Note: any MFP entry that includes "USDA" was USER entered.

    For packaged foods, I verify the label against what I find in MFP. (Alas, you cannot just scan with your phone and assume what you get is correct. Note: scanning is mostly only available with Premium these days.)

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