Premium vs Free

NewMe4Life247

Here in American myfitness pal doesn't let you scan barcodes unless you buy Premium. Used to long time ago it did but not anymore, also someone on youtube from England says it free for them. This is so frustrating logging it yourself and it not letting you enter what you need to.

cmriverside

Get a VPN and use an England IP address. (?)

For the record, the scanned foods are entered by users just like yourself. They are as "wrong" as any of the other ones in the database.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean when you say it won't let you enter what you need to? You can add new foods to the database at any time. Takes about 30 seconds. There is a little bit of a learning curve but it's not onerous. I mean, if you feel like logging food is helpful - you do what you have to do.

It takes me about one minute per meal to log a meal.

Keep working at it and soon you'll have all your favorite foods in the "Recents" or "Favorites" list and it's easy peasy.

Lietchi

You can still search the database, just not with the barcode scanner.

Sure, it's free in some countries, but also quite useless often for me in Belgium, giving wrong results (wrong nutritional data or even the wrong product entirely, or no result at all).

RhysL5982

I'm from the uk and its not available for me either unfortunately.

claireychn074

I’m UK, premium and so have the barcode scanner. It’s pants .most of the time it’s wrong because - as others said up the thread - it’s still user inputted. And if by some chance it’s been inputted correctly, the manufacturer will then change their recipe and the values are wrong. Great idea, just not 100% implemented.

Defo doesn’t work for a lot of M&S barcodes - they appear to be the same as some US convenience store so you get really weird returns!

AnnPT77

Gosh, the horror . . . a free tool that doesn't do exactly what I (or whoever) would like, and do it all for free.

Consider the lifecycle of SparkPeople, which used to provide somewhat similar functions to MFP, all for free. On their web site, they say:

SparkPeople's business model has always been free and was driven by advertiser support, a model that became difficult to maintain in recent years. With many larger technology companies emerging in the health and fitness space, we struggled to compete for the same advertising dollars that would keep the site online and alive. Unfortunately, it costs many millions of dollars per year to run SparkPeople, and the burden eventually became too much.

Is any surprise, in that context, that MFP is pushing premium, and making popular features premium only?

(I'm in the camp that thinks bar-code scanning in MFP isn't a great thing. I have premium, could use that function, literally never do. But yeah, it's popular. Or was.)

Personally, I really want MFP to continue to be available, because it's made a huge contribution to my achieving my goals. IMO, it's great that the functions that let people get started are still free, with more specialized or advanced things costing money. YMMV.

springlering62

Barcode scanning isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.

I just scanned a package of sundried tomatoes.

I got “cottage pie”. 🤦🏻‍♀️

In all honesty, it’s just easier to look for the food, or enter the details myself.

yirara

I never updated the app and still have the scanner. Every now and then I try it. On Sunday I scanned a pack of instant ramen. I got some coffee. And to be honest, even if it's the right product type the nutritional info is off because from a different country or outdated, or simply entered incorrectly.

Hobartlemagne

I started MFP 10 yrs ago when barcode scanning was free. I liked it.
I returned to MFP to lose the covid flab and discovered scanning was gone.
I realized- the majority of items on the market are added to the database before you try to add it. Just type in the brand and item name. I'm even willing to pick an incorrect entry if the calories are the same.