Weekly report - does it track number of different vegetables?

2018gettinghealthy

Looking at my weekly report, it shows I logged 48 vegetables. Is that 48 different vegetables? Or just 48 times I logged vegetables?

AnnPT77

2018gettinghealthy wrote: »

Thank you for your reply AnnPT77. I log everything individually, or try to. I'm wondering if I eat, for example, carrots five times during the week, does it count that as 5 vegetables for the week, or as one for the week?

I'm reading that we should try to eat 30 DIFFERENT types of vegetables every week for a healthy gut microbiome. So, I'm wondering if myfitnesspal is counting the different types in my weekly report, or just how many times I logged vegetables in general. Thanks again.

I believe the weekly report is counting the number, not the number of types.

I got 1 credit on the weekly report for each instance of "mixed berries" that I logged, and one credit each for other fruits that I ate just once. The number of instances of mixed berries plus the number of one-time fruits added up to the total number that appears in my weekly report. That's what I was trying to say in my PP, to answer your question.

If you ate carrots 5 times, I believe that will count as 5 veggies on the weekly report.

Yes, some sources are recommending that we get 30 different plant foods per week. MFP doesn't count that for us. Honestly, I don't think it could count that for us very accurately . . . I don't think the fruit/veggies count is exact, either.

That was kind of my point when talking about the mixed berries. If it's 4 kinds of berries, that would count as 4 of the different plants. But MFP has no way to know how many different berries are in the mixed berries. (Yes, in theory they could research every brand and pin it down, but that's not realistic, especially when we're talking about a crowd-sourced database.) If I logged a thing called (making stuff up) "Granny's Compote" and it was essentially a fruit salad with 6 fruits in it, MFP wouldn't even know it was fruit, wouldn't count it on the weekly report as even one fruit, let alone 6 fruits.

Some people have asked for that functionality - counting each distinct plant food - in the feature suggestions area here:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/categories/feature-suggestions-and-ideas

Realistically, I don't think the app can do it accurately, even if they wanted to.

I do believe that eating plenty of varied, colorful veggies and fruits is beneficial for health (microbiome-wise and otherwise). Different "experts" online propose slightly different counting methods (in terms of what counts, what quantity counts, etc.).

For fun, I went through one of my typical weeks and counted plant foods. Even doing it myself, knowing exactly what I ate, my count felt approximate. I have career background in IT and data design/data management. I can't imagine automating that count and getting understandable results, let alone results that everyone would agree were accurately counted (given the different definitions from different advocates).

In the current environment, AI could possibly be employed, but that's going to take a lot of (what is probably) fossil fuel; and one of the features of AI generally is that it's difficult to impossible to know why it did what it did. It could probably be used to produce a count, and a list of what it had counted.

On balance, I feel like some people may benefit motivationally from game-ifying eating (counting plants). For myself, as a heavy consumer of plant foods, my rough count suggested that I was doing just fine, and I don't personally feel motivated to be more detail-oriented about it on a daily basis. If I eat 25 different plants this week, 32 next week, and a horrifyingly ( ) low 17 the following week, that's OK with me. It would be a surprising week that would be as low as 17, but I'm sure it happens. (I'm at 10 different plant foods already today by the kind of rules Yirara mentions, and I've only had breakfast. There'll be some repetition over the week, but also some reasonable variability.)

YMMV, and I'm not criticizing that at all. People differing is part of what makes social interaction fun and interesting, sincerely. :flowerforyou:

Best wishes!

AnnPT77

Pretty sure it's just the number of times you logged vegetables . . . and just the ones it recognized.

Simple example: I logged frozen mixed berries multiple times. It definitely counted that as one fruit. It has no idea how many different fruits that was. It can't have. (It was 4 different types of berries in real life.) I ate that nearly every day, plus some other fruit.

2018gettinghealthy

Thank you for your reply AnnPT77. I log everything individually, or try to. I'm wondering if I eat, for example, carrots five times during the week, does it count that as 5 vegetables for the week, or as one for the week?

I'm reading that we should try to eat 30 DIFFERENT types of vegetables every week for a healthy gut microbiome. So, I'm wondering if myfitnesspal is counting the different types in my weekly report, or just how many times I logged vegetables in general. Thanks again.

yirara

Oh, I never saw this functionality before. Though I've not updated the app in ages.

It's 30 plants per week, but including olive oil, coffee, spices (I log them as 1/4). But I don't think MFP could simple do that because everyone has different rules for this, and most people don't do it at all. Plus it's an international website. It would have to recognize peanuts in I don't know how many languages.