Might I suggest a work-around? Click on a meal, then enter a random word. The likelyhood is that you'll get back 'not found' and you will be invited to add a new food at the bottom.

When you enter the title, you're instructed to add the various quantities. At the end, there's a coice of adding it to the meal in question. There's also a choice on whether to add it to MFP's database or not. If you decide not to, it still stays as one of YOUR foods, and can be recalled on demand.

It works for me.

Randomness might be solved by sorting everything alphabetically.

What makes MFP such a powerful tool, is indeed it's user customisation. Unfortunately, this is also it's drawback.

It's great that you've found a way that works for you, and I'm fully aware of how to create my own foods, log them correctly, and even assign them barcodes.

My goal is a little loftier though. I would like to be able to walk into any shop in the UK, pick up any food item, scan it's barcode, and have the correct information appear on the screen.
The only thing standing in my way, is people deliberately making incorrect entries.

If the item isn't on the system? No problem. I don't mind creating and assigning the barcode (food entries have to be shared in order to facilitate the barcode feature).
However, having to repeatedly edit or reassign food items because other users change them to incorrect items or nonsense servings (last night, someone had changed cucumbers into a per slice value, like a slice is a SI unit?) really starts to grate.



The alphabet isn't the random issue. It's that users name the items random words that make them difficult to find.

Randomness might be solved by sorting everything alphabetically.

Oh that would make such a difference! I'm amazed that it's not alphabetical!

Depending on what version your are using, there should already be the option for this.

So tonight, not a single thing scanned correctly (even though the correct item was in the database, perhaps "aaaah, close enough" moments?)
Upon finding the correct items, none of them were correctly logged.

One, it was evident, had previously had all of it's information added correctly, but then someone else had come along and changed the calories and serving size, throwing the rest out.
Smart enough to search for and edit an individual item, but too dumb to use the drop down box on the portion size? Or just really inconsiderate to others?

Just read the label people, don't try maths. The whole point is that MFP does the maths for you when you change the portion size.

The scanner is just useless 90% of the time as it will bring up other brand items and different (usually higher) calorie contents.

But after I've logged a food it scans correctly 100% of the time. It's when someone then changes it to something not quite correct a couple of weeks later that I can't figure out.

Scan a frijj milkshake and it comes up with 100ml as a portion. Who ever dank one of them over 4.7 days??:ohwell:

That's the amount that the nutritional information is provided in.

You can then select 4.7 of these portions, or
You can then select ml, and type in the number of ml you have, or
Select whole container (which if added correctly will be the whole bottle), and you could add one of these, or a portion i.e. 0.5.

The above methods use 0 maths and will prevent people from;

a) Messing it up
b) Not being bothered to add other nutrients

I believe this is one of the main reasons the MFP Calorie Calculator was created.