Vitamins

adesouza1989
adesouza1989 Posts: 1 Member
in Food and Nutrition
Hi is there a way to track magnesium and vitamin B in the app?

Answers

  • cwolfman13
    cwolfman13 Posts: 41,865 Member
    adesouza1989 wrote: »
    Hi is there a way to track magnesium and vitamin B in the app?

    In general, tracking micro-nutrients like vitamins and minerals with MFP is a crap shoot as the database is crowdsourced from other users and often, micro-nutritional information is not entered. Also, MFP only tracks those micro-nutrients that are required by the FDA to be put on food labels...magnesium and vitamin B are not required to be labeled by the FDA, so your answer is no.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 35,138 Member
    No.

    The MFP database is crowd-sourced, i.e., entered by regular MFP users. Even the most meticulous of those users only have the information they see on the product label. USA product labels aren't required to list magnesium or B vitamins. Since MFP is a US company, they usually follow US labeling practice.

    What I do is spot check a couple of very typical days of eating against a more comprehensive data source, such as the Food Data Central database:

    https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/

    If I'm doing fine on typical days, I don't worry much about it.

    Another option is to do a web search like "high magnesium foods". If I'm eating quite a few things on lists like that, I also tend not to worry about it.

    YMMV. If this bothers you, there are other apps that track more nutrients . . . but they tend to have a less comprehensive pre-existing database in terms of number/variety of foods, since their data needs to be centrally curated. It's a trade-off.
  • andersonsheery766
    andersonsheery766 Posts: 1 Member
    Yes, you can track magnesium and vitamin B intake in MyFitnessPal. Open the app, go to the "More" tab, select "Settings," then "Diary Settings." Here, you can customize the nutrients you want to track, including magnesium and various B vitamins. Adjust your settings, and you'll be able to monitor these nutrients along with your other food intake.
  • Lietchi
    Lietchi Posts: 6,962 Member
    andersonsheery766 wrote: »
    Yes, you can track magnesium and vitamin B intake in MyFitnessPal. Open the app, go to the "More" tab, select "Settings," then "Diary Settings." Here, you can customize the nutrients you want to track, including magnesium and various B vitamins. Adjust your settings, and you'll be able to monitor these nutrients along with your other food intake.

    Magnesium and vitamin B aren't in the list of options though:

    9riv26n85urt.jpg
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 35,138 Member
    Lietchi wrote: »
    andersonsheery766 wrote: »
    Yes, you can track magnesium and vitamin B intake in MyFitnessPal. Open the app, go to the "More" tab, select "Settings," then "Diary Settings." Here, you can customize the nutrients you want to track, including magnesium and various B vitamins. Adjust your settings, and you'll be able to monitor these nutrients along with your other food intake.

    Magnesium and vitamin B aren't in the list of options though:

    9riv26n85urt.jpg

    Even if one could select them (which I agree one can't, as far as I can find) they wouldn't be in the food database in the overwhelming majority of cases (all cases, now), so displaying a value wouldn't really be tracking them.

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