logging whole foods takes FOREVER.

Once you've found them once then they should show up in your recent/most used list - and I've always been able to find individual whole foods.

This

For vegetables or fruit just type in the vegetable and the word "raw". This will bring the non-user added whole food to the top of the list. Example "broccoli raw"

For meats, I type in how I cooked it. Example "porksteak broiled" then I look for the one that says this. If you use this website: nutritiondata.self.com/ it has all kind of meats listed cooked various types of ways. Just search for it. You'll find that MFP has these same entries and you'll learn how to search for them easier.

I guess I just dont complain about things I cannot conceive on how to do better. I cannot think of another way to log this, and maybe this is my limiting factor, If you have a better idea then perhaps you should put it out there and maybe it would be implemented. By the way the barcode scanner idea is genius, whoever came up with that rocks.

I don't believe it is fair to complain about logging meals in MFP, when compared to what the rest of the planet goes through every time they want to log a meal, including looking up, or googling each ingredient, and then each nutritional aspect. That is when they have google as opposed to a big fat 10 year old book in a library. Example i not only monitor my calories, I also monitor my carbs, sat fat, fiber and potassium. Imagine doing this manually for each of the ingredients.. I also use the add recepie function for everything from my salads, to meals and even for my coffee. One useful trick, for example as I usually have eggs for breakfast is i have the basic omelet already set up (oil, eggs, cheese, salt), and just plug in the daily ingredient changes, ie broccoli, asparagus, beef, spinach etc.

Most of my foods are not in the list as I live in Belgium and very few Belgian came on this site...but most of my foods are fresh vegetables so they are there. Still it was taking me ages to add 1 onion, 1 carrot, 1 pepper, 1/2 eggplant, 2 tomatoes and 1/2 courgette...so I putt these together in my recipes and I take off the one that I don't use. I just have to add patoes or rice, but here I put "raw basmati rice" for example, I don't care if uncle ben's is different from waitrose or the one I use, idem for green lentils or whatever, I just use the ones there and I always find something very close...I have my breakfasts in my recipes and basically, the pain in the *kitten* is only if I eat out, otherwise it takes me less than 1 minute. For me this is the best from all the apps I tried, but everyone has different needs and expectations.

Now I don't log in to get the perfect numbers, I just want a "red light" that tells me "how my gosh I did not know 250g of peanuts was 1400 cal" or "if I take a small piece of chocolate now, I am over-calories today" to help me maintain my habits. I think I entered 5 products by myself, the rest is through assismilation of existing ones. I noticed that using "raw" before the element I want is better for me. Sometimes I have to try 2 or 3 but then I stick it to the end. Hope it helps

What I find annoying is that, sometimes I'll enter a food (say, brocolli) and it pulls up 2-3 entries for brocolli. none of which are consistent in their numbers, plus another 60 or so recipes with brocolli in them. Then, once I find the one I'm after, it's measured in weight, not volume - I have no idea how much space 45g brocolli fills , but I know I had approximately 1 cup. Lots of googling to make the translations.

So, yes, it's a bit of a pain - which is NOT an excuse for those in the peanut gallery who are itching to chime in thusly. It's an annoyance of the TOOL, not the logging exercise itself. There is room for improvement in the search / catalog tool

For fresh foods I use the original (i.e. not starred) entries because they give a lot of options of how to measure - weight, size, volume, shredded vs. sliced, etc. And they always include all the nutrients, not just calories. (Often people who add foods to the database just include calories, which is not so helpful.) I find if I include the word "raw" when I'm searching for fruits/vegetables the unstarred entry almost always comes up near the top of the list, so easy to find.

The only issue I have is with the recipe feature. If I want to change the amount of an ingredient, I have to look up the item all over again. It would be nice to edit the amounts within the recipe builder.

ya it's weird that you have to do that on the website. That is why I now mainly edit my old recipes on the android app because it allows me to change the amounts without having to look for them again.

I guess maybe it depends on the level of precision you are looking for. I'm pretty loose about following a recipe so it would take forever to log precisely, but I if I have penne with shrimp for dinner, I'm content to look up "homemade pasta with shrimp" and use that, if the stats seem about right. Yes, this will not give me high precision logging, but it suits my purposes.

After a couple of weeks, your foods are in there and you just 'copy to a different day' or use 'frequent used foods'...

^^ this. There's like space for 20-some foods I think in the frequently used foods tab, also there's the recently used tab with the same amount. I eat mostly whole foods and I haven't had a problem.

What I find annoying is that, sometimes I'll enter a food (say, brocolli) and it pulls up 2-3 entries for brocolli. none of which are consistent in their numbers, plus another 60 or so recipes with brocolli in them. Then, once I find the one I'm after, it's measured in weight, not volume - I have no idea how much space 45g brocolli fills , but I know I had approximately 1 cup. Lots of googling to make the translations.

So, yes, it's a bit of a pain - which is NOT an excuse for those in the peanut gallery who are itching to chime in thusly. It's an annoyance of the TOOL, not the logging exercise itself. There is room for improvement in the search / catalog tool

I completely agree on this one. Also given that the size of a 'cup' varies depending upon your location on the planet and probably the MFP tool has it in US standards which pisses me off because it should be by WEIGHT and that way everyone could use the same one. This means that I am constantly over calories because USA cups and CDN cups are NOT the same size but I really don't have that kind of time to go find the weight of liquids then do the conversion between US and CDN cups. If everything was weight based it would be nice.

The only issue I have is with the recipe feature. If I want to change the amount of an ingredient, I have to look up the item all over again. It would be nice to edit the amounts within the recipe builder.

Also annoying because I do not follow recipes when I cook , never have and never will. I add a 'dash' and a 'pinch', I taste what I cook and adjust as needed as most people who love cooking do. I weigh everything of course but some days I will use .025g and another time .035g and to have to re-make the whole recipe is just annoying. I don't want to have it in 'my meals' because something like marinara sauce has about 20 separate ingredients. So first I make the recipe and then because I can't use MY RECIPES to cook other things with..like say..veal parmigiana with my marinara sauce I have to make a whole new entry under 'my food' - which I then have to change every time I make a new batch of sauce.

But you can only copy to the same meal the next day. Typically I have dinner and take it for lunch the next day. I'd love if I could copy dinner yesterday to lunch today. It would make it much easier.

THIS would be awesome! Normally I can find it in 'recent' but it would be a time saver to be able to copy directly.

Not sure if this has been said before, but someone once made this suggestion to me and it has saved a ton of time.

Put your plate/bowl on your scale and zero it. Add food to plate/bowl, get measurements, add to MFP, zero the scale. Add next food to plate/bowl, get measurements, add to MFP, zero the scale. So on and so forth.

As for recipes....there is no faster way of logging them. But I did learn that you can edit them if you want to change up the recipe slightly. Some days call for more garlic, you know what I mean? :laugh: