Olate scanning

iomispuideardelean

Hello! Is it possible to scan my plate?

yirara

Within mfp? Not as far as I know. So far this technology is not good enough yet to know what exactly is on your plate, how much cooking oil you used, what brand of e.g. bread (higher or lower calories) and lots of other things.

springlering62

agree with @yirara.

How does it know the difference between a great bean soup and a meaty chili? They look similar.

How does it know if I grilled a lean steak versus a filet mignon? If I rubbed it down with butter or oil? Used salt and pepper versus one of those rubs that are half sugar?

When I make my smoothie or homemade ice cream, how will it know what in the world I put in the thing?

Will it know the difference between a regular banana and a higher calorie, much larger plantain? Between zuchinni and chayote? Arugula and cilantro?

If I’m one of those who uses a small plate to make my servings visually appear larger, how will it judge quantity?

If you’re trying to lose weight, accuracy is key. Using recipes others have built here or scanning a plate is half assing it. You won’t get to half your current *kitten* if you half *kitten* it.

😂

AnnPT77

In premium MFP - not free MFP - and only in the phone/tablet app, it is possible to take a photo of your plate and have MFP help you guess at calories. I tried it. It was seriously not helpful, more laborious for me than simply logging the foods manually. I admit I tried it when I was already an old hand at logging, so the contrast was probably more stark.

If you have premium, click on "Add Food" in your diary. When the food search/selection page appears, look for the band of squares just below the search bar that starts with "Voice log". Scroll across the squares until you reach "Scan a Meal". That should open a camera window. Follow the direction that says to tap the button. That will produce a list of things that might be in that photo. From there, you have to pick which things are there from a list, which may or may not contain the items in the photo, and which will give you no aid at all with portion sizes, which you still need to figure out.

Just to get some screen grabs, I tried to pick an example of something quick I could scan that was kind of obvious. There was a bag of walnuts on my counter from recent shopping:

Here's what I got:

I didn't have a meal handy, but did have some yogurt and creatine powder (a supplement) in a bowl near me, so on a whim I scanned that. I didn't expect it to be accurate, but I thought it might do better than it did. First screen grab is the image, second what MFP guessed might be there:

I scanned a bunch of bananas; at least bananas were on the list, but no rational estimate of sizes, just defaults.

Is that helpful? I don't think so. In the best case, it saved me from typing "banana". That's all. I've tried it in the past with an actual meal, and it was equally not helpful, just extra steps and confusion.

I think they added it for marketing reasons, because it sounds really cool and modern. But it doesn't work very well at all.

Just my opinion, though.