Adding costs to meals/recipes

willbrann2003

This is for project I’m working on - would people want these, a reply would be really helpful.
1. It would be good for people to add the cost to the meals on the explore page.
2. This is a bigger task for MyFitnessPal but getting the cost of food for each item so it would work out the cost of daily meals and recipes you add based on where you’re from and shop.

Alatariel75

That seems like a gargantuan task, with variables that would make the info interesting but not particularly useful. The asparagus quiche I made 4 weeks ago while they were in season and dead cheap would be a very different price now that the season is over, for example.

Not to mention that MFP doesn't even vet the food database as it is, much less have the functionality to check prices from around the world.

This seems more like something people could keep in the notes section (if MFP listens to people and brings that back for iPhones...)

claireychn074

I can’t see how that would work. If we assume I only shop at one supermarket in my local area - in England - we still have to account for price fluctuations in the market. Those include supermarket pricing variations such as 3 for 2 offers, the increase in food production costs, changes in distribution costs, inflation and general increases, shrinkflation etc. and that’s assuming I can buy the same produce and brands each time.

It would need to be accurately plugged into the supermarket - and there’s no way they would support that - and you’d need a huge database in the background (there’s a reason why food comparison websites don’t exist).

So, great idea, I love that it would help people to plan, but I think the data and metrics involved are unworkable.

COGypsy

I wouldn’t find that particularly meaningful. Plus, as others have mentioned, I can’t imagine how MFP would gather and manage individual item prices every day for every grocery store in every country where there are MFP users. MFP doesn’t even curate the database they already have, adding an even larger, more dynamic database and expecting it to be accurate in any way is crazy.

AnnPT77

On any given day, the ingredient cost even in my one local area will vary significantly depending on the store, farmers market or even neighbor/garden I get that ingredient from. As someone else said, this would be a data management/coordination problem of gargantuan proportions . . . even if I were trying to track the costs for just my very own foods, let alone expecting MFP to track it for everything in every one of the many countries internationally where MFP is used, and in every currency that might be used to purchase the items.

High cost, poor accuracy, and possibly of interest to only a limited section of the user base even if it were accurate. There are much better ways - more helpful ways - MFP could spend their developers' effort.

Just my opinion, though.