MFP Encourages "Convenience" Nutrition
Replies
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I kind of feel the oppisite. The site is making me aware when I go through my diary that the pre-packaged stuff is where most of my sodium and sugar comes from so I start looking for non-processed alternatives.
That's kind of what I was getting at. I eat almost nothing prepackaged. Which makes my numerical diary totals feel a little "guessish" (yes, I just made that word up) but a couple years ago when I started using MFP, I noticed big spikes in sodium, sugar, etc.
It shouldn't be "guessish" if you weigh your food. You eat a potato? Weigh it and log the info for the allotted amount of ounces or grams of said potato. What's there to guess?
And if you feel that the energy to log your food is wasted, then don't do it. Just don't wonder (and ask everyone here) why you aren't hitting your goals when it comes down to it. Simple solution, really. You admittedly aren't utilizing the tool correctly- doesn't mean that there's something wrong with the way it's constructed.0 -
Does anyone else fell like this site lends itself to prepackaged foods and/or commercial dining? It's easier to get nutritional information from those sources but you're really doing a disservice to your health!
And that's what this whole weight loss thing is really about, isn't it? Doing what's easy.
MFP doesn't encourage me to do anything. It's a tool. How you use the tool is up to you.
Silly to quote the main topic. Of course that's what you're replying to.
I'm confused. Were we supposed to answer a mystery question that isn't visible?
And no, to your main topic question that is visible.0 -
That hasn't been my experience, but I'm only one person. I guess it's a tiny bit quicker to scan in, say, sabra hummus than it is to scan in a can of chickpeas and the jar of tahini and enter in some garlic and lemon but I think anyone in the right mindset doesn't mind taking those extra few seconds.
I suppose I feel like it affects my day to day in a way I'm not comfortable with. I'm a bit of a Free-love-hippie girl deep down and tallying every molecule feels obsessive, like I could better exert those energies elsewhere?
Why are you blaming the tool? You are admitting here that it is -you- who is not comfortable utilizing it.0 -
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I guess it is easier because all you have to do is scan a bar code or look up a chain restaurant's nutritional info. However, after using MFP's recipe tool for some time and building up my own database of recipes I keep in regular rotation, I find it just as easy as it would be to log a frozen meal. Cooking for yourself will always take more work, whether it is the actual prep or logging!
Ditto.0 -
*looks at grapefruit she's having for a snack*
Well. I suppose it was convenient. Just had to peel it, weigh it, and head out to the porch to nom.
Which is to say, no. The recipe maker is easy to use. Finding the proper foods is easy ('Grapefruit pink raw' brings me the usda entry with no issue) But finding restaurants in the datebase, hoping what you ordered is there, trusting that the portions are accurate and that no one added extra oil or butter or that the spoonful of potatoes isn't a little hefty that day...? That's some iffy stuff.
Logging food is, by far, the easiest part of the whole thing.
First can I just say "smokin" to your before and after.
And yeah produce is a breeze. I've not messed with the recipe creator too much. Tedious.0 -
I don't feel it encourages convenience or natural either way. It is a database to find nutrition. You can find nutrition of most fresh items somewhere either in the data base or out on the net.
personally I am eating more convenience foods than I would like, but that has to do with where I am in my life. I am working longer hours, getting home later, my husband gets home earlier and it is just hard to cook right now. I know terrible, but I am lucky I am keeping up with other things. But my overall health is really good, I just weigh too much. I know it is not optimal, but if I when not using convenience food, then I end up eating wrong. I try to opt for the healthiest options, lower sodium and add veggies to my meals.
Life and diet are what you make of it and you do the best you can for your overall health. Life can't always be perfect. I really find all the diet databases I have used to work for both. Its just eating raw, healthy and creating your own recipes in the database take a little more work, at least at first.0 -
Does anyone else fell like this site lends itself to prepackaged foods and/or commercial dining? It's easier to get nutritional information from those sources but you're really doing a disservice to your health!
No0 -
That hasn't been my experience, but I'm only one person. I guess it's a tiny bit quicker to scan in, say, sabra hummus than it is to scan in a can of chickpeas and the jar of tahini and enter in some garlic and lemon but I think anyone in the right mindset doesn't mind taking those extra few seconds.
I suppose I feel like it affects my day to day in a way I'm not comfortable with. I'm a bit of a Free-love-hippie girl deep down and tallying every molecule feels obsessive, like I could better exert those energies elsewhere?
IDK, I spend about ten minutes actually logging food. Prep and cook time aren't much longer than they've always been (I chop/skin/whatever things and put them on a dish/pan already placed on the scale as I go then jot the number on a piece of paper for later logging, so the only extra time is going 'ah, 120 grams, *write*.I've always bought meat and bulk and broke it into serving sized amounts then froze it, so that's the same.') and off I go.
Edit: And thank you.
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Does anyone else fell like this site lends itself to prepackaged foods and/or commercial dining? It's easier to get nutritional information from those sources but you're really doing a disservice to your health!
And that's what this whole weight loss thing is really about, isn't it? Doing what's easy.
MFP doesn't encourage me to do anything. It's a tool. How you use the tool is up to you.
Silly to quote the main topic. Of course that's what you're replying to.
I was trying to make it easier for you.0 -
No....
I don't really eat much in the way of prepackaged foods or convenience foods and I do just fine. I do 99.9% of the cooking in my household and I cook primarily from scratch, whole ingredients. I have never had any issue finding anything in the database...when in doubt type USDA after whatever it is you are searching for...use a food scale and learn grams and use the recipe building function provided with this tool.
This is a tool and can only be as useful as the end user wants it to be. Does using a hammer encourage pounding holes in walls?0 -
Also, convenience food is more easily logged because the nutritional information is already calculated.
So I am failing to see the issue here.0 -
Yay. Someone else ready to tell us how buying food from a store will kill us all.
Sorry, I don't have the time to operate a large scale garden and butcher shop. I'll keep buying processed foods. You do you.
There's a difference between "food from a store" and "convenience" food, I think we would all agree. I "do me" by steering away from frozen and prepackeged. That is all.0 -
Most of the time I try to enter each item, or make my own recipe - however on occasion I have entered something that is "close" to what I had, just for the sake of ease, or because I went out and that place isn't in the database (think small local restaurants).
I do like the scanner -and I have used it when I make recipes too - it's easy to scan the can of tomato sauce, or the box of pasta, and just add in the onion, peppers, and meat (sometimes scanable) to make the recipe. Depends on how much time I have - weekends - no problem usually - Tuesday night I barely have time to cook, so its either something easy to log, or I pick something from the data base.
I think it's what you make of it. Also - after a while, you know what you eat, and you learn the portion sizes, so it's easy to find the appropriate entry.0 -
*looks at grapefruit she's having for a snack*
Well. I suppose it was convenient. Just had to peel it, weigh it, and head out to the porch to nom.
Which is to say, no. The recipe maker is easy to use. Finding the proper foods is easy ('Grapefruit pink raw' brings me the usda entry with no issue) But finding restaurants in the datebase, hoping what you ordered is there, trusting that the portions are accurate and that no one added extra oil or butter or that the spoonful of potatoes isn't a little hefty that day...? That's some iffy stuff.
Logging food is, by far, the easiest part of the whole thing.
First can I just say "smokin" to your before and after.
And yeah produce is a breeze. I've not messed with the recipe creator too much. Tedious.
Ah. "Convenience" does seem to line up with other, similar adjectives.0 -
Does anyone else fell like this site lends itself to prepackaged foods and/or commercial dining? It's easier to get nutritional information from those sources but you're really doing a disservice to your health!
And that's what this whole weight loss thing is really about, isn't it? Doing what's easy.
MFP doesn't encourage me to do anything. It's a tool. How you use the tool is up to you.
Silly to quote the main topic. Of course that's what you're replying to.
Silly to reply and completely ignore the people who are answering (challenging) the OP
i'm pretty sure the OP did it out of convenience. and i'm sure she'll blame doing it on MFP or some other outside force0 -
Yay. Someone else ready to tell us how buying food from a store will kill us all.
Sorry, I don't have the time to operate a large scale garden and butcher shop. I'll keep buying processed foods. You do you.
There's a difference between "food from a store" and "convenience" food, I think we would all agree. I "do me" by steering away from frozen and prepackeged. That is all.
I think the "I "do me"" went out the window with the "It's easier to get nutritional information from those sources but you're really doing a disservice to your health! "0 -
No.
The food in the database without the * by it is from the USDA database. You just have to know the correct words to search with. For produce search with the word "raw" like "Banana raw". For meat you need to search either "raw" or cooked depending on when you weight it. For example "Chicken thigh cooked". The USDA entries usually have at least one volume entry and one weight entry, often it has lot of options like sliced, whole, grams, lbs, etc.0 -
Does anyone else fell like this site lends itself to prepackaged foods and/or commercial dining? It's easier to get nutritional information from those sources but you're really doing a disservice to your health!
And that's what this whole weight loss thing is really about, isn't it? Doing what's easy.
MFP doesn't encourage me to do anything. It's a tool. How you use the tool is up to you.
Silly to quote the main topic. Of course that's what you're replying to.
Silly to reply and completely ignore the people who are answering (challenging) the OP
i'm pretty sure the OP did it out of convenience. and i'm sure she'll blame doing it on MFP or some other outside force
It was more convenient to address a trivial matter rather than the wave of disagreement. Makes sense.0 -
No.
The food in the database without the * by it is from the USDA database. You just have to know the correct words to search with. For produce search with the word "raw" like "Banana raw". For meat you need to search either "raw" or cooked depending on when you weight it. For example "Chicken thigh cooked". The USDA entries usually have at least one volume entry and one weight entry, often it has lot of options like sliced, whole, grams, lbs, etc.
I actually find those MFP entries much more convenient because they offer so many different measurements. No need to go to my conversion app if I weighed in ounces only to find an entry in grams or vice versa.0 -
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i eat lots of chicken, and rice, and fish, and steak, and tacos, and tuna cans, and buffalo sauce, and pasta, in addition to prepackaged things.
ive had no issue logging.
MFP encourages calorie counting.
how the user decides to eat is entirely up to them.0 -
I guess it is easier because all you have to do is scan a bar code or look up a chain restaurant's nutritional info. However, after using MFP's recipe tool for some time and building up my own database of recipes I keep in regular rotation, I find it just as easy as it would be to log a frozen meal. Cooking for yourself will always take more work, whether it is the actual prep or logging!
I agree with this and this is what I do also. Create my own recipes and load them into the recipe builder and save them. Easy peasy to add to your food log then.
We tend to eat some of the same things over and over.0 -
*looks at grapefruit she's having for a snack*
Well. I suppose it was convenient. Just had to peel it, weigh it, and head out to the porch to nom.
WAYT DOE.
DID U WEIGHT DA GRAPEFROOT B4 YOU PEELT IT OR JUX DA PART UNDR DA PEAL?0 -
*looks at grapefruit she's having for a snack*
Well. I suppose it was convenient. Just had to peel it, weigh it, and head out to the porch to nom.
WAYT DOE.
DID U WEIGHT DA GRAPEFROOT B4 YOU PEELT IT OR JUX DA PART UNDR DA PEAL?
LOLOLOLOOOLOLOLOLLLL0 -
No, the MFP database doesn't encourage "convenience" nutrition. It's the nature of convenient foods to be, well, more convenient. I don't need to weigh out my ready meals - it's all calculated for me. Someone else (working in a factory) has taken the time to weigh out the pasta, the meat, the veg and the sauce (and trust me - I know, I used to work in a fish factory on ready meals...). Someone else has then calculated how many calories, and how much fat, protein and carbs are in that dish so all I have to do is scan it.
Preparing meals yourself (regardless of whether you're watching what you eat or not) requires some sort of measurement. And if you're counting calories as well, those measurements need to be accurate. Then you have to have some way of putting these all together before logging them. Before MFP I used a spreadsheet for my recipes (I cook most evenings for the family and have done for several years before watching what I eat), which was a royal pita.
Luckily, MFP has a good recipe builder (it's the old one), which allows me to enter the weights of all my ingredients and it calculates it all for me, then allows me to enter a serving into the database. Simples! Much, much easier than setting up a spreadsheet for each recipe. Now if only the recipe builder would let me change ingredient quantities or copy recipes to alter (I cook similar things a lot), then I would be a very happy cook indeed.0 -
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it's easier to get the information from packaged foods for obvious reasons. It also makes it very easy to add your own. I don't think there are any biases going on here.0
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No, I don't feel that way at all. I do a lot of my own cooking from scratch and I find it VERY EASY to use MFP. Note that I am a Senior citizen. I am a dinosuar.... I don't have a cell phone or smart phone or scanner or apps or whateve you guys are using. I am not particularly computer savvy. I find the MFP website (using computer at home) totally adequate and simple to use. I figured it out by myself and did not even need to ask my son for help.
Now that I have quite a few of my regular foods logged in (such as apple, grapefruit, banana, Dave's killer bread, roast chicken meat, etc), then it is very easy to log in because I can click and get a list of my usual foods.
Even if it was harder and more complicated and more time-consuming to log my food, I would still do it because eating healthily and losing some weight is one of my top priorities right now. I've tried to keep a food diary (by hand in a notebook) but could never stick with it. MFP is so much easier for me to stick with and it's kind of fun.0 -
I pre-apologize for what is probably a mischaracterization of the topic on my part, but...
My intuition just tells me this is kind of just another I-don't-like-tracking-it's-all-about-quality-not-quantity threads, just in a slightly different disguise.0
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