SparkPeople vs. MyFitnessPal? Help...

I used SP for about 5 months, and made some great buddies there. The biggest problem I had with SP was with the negative attitudes of the moderators and the so-called experts towards people who don't follow their idea of a proper diet. Their idea of a proper diet is very narrow, and absolutely does not include anyone who eats low carb, paleo, primal, gluten free, grain free, etc.

The poor attitudes displayed by moderators and experts carried over to the community, and you'd get certain members who would decide they too were "experts". There was a lot of bizarre behaviour there--censoring of posts, reporting of posts that either one of the actual SP experts or one of the self-appointed wanna-be experts didn't like for whatever reason, snippy comments, hijacking/derailing of threads, etc.

There was a particular situation not too many months ago where the SP Dietitian wrote up an article on how great various carb-loaded foods are for you. In that article, the SP author referred to "lies" about carbs, and essentially attempted to float her article based on this notion that your brain NEEDS carbs, low carb experts are "liars", low carb dieters are also "liars" and dangerous, unhealthy people, etc. The article was very confrontational. Comments were initially allowed on the article. Some people were responding to her favourably, others were respectfully disagreeing with her article and leaving links to studies, asking rather good questions, etc. The author/SP Dietitian "expert" never participated in the discussion of her article. Next thing you know, the entire comment section was deleted and nobody was able to comment at all.

One of the members who was asking challenging, but totally respectful questions of the author started a thread on the main forums about the article, both discussing the fact that the article was written in a rather confrontational way, but also asking why all the comments had been deleted. The member was never given any sort of real answer by the SP employees, so she ended up leaving the site.

Following all of that nonsense, I decided I didn't really want to be on a site that was so heavily censored or "moderated", depending on how you look at it. I think we can all benefit and learn from discussions that remain open to different opinions, so it's important to me that discussions can be had without this sort of censorship.

Ok...apart from all that drama-related stuff, logging food is SO much more efficient here at MFP. The site as whole is much "cleaner" in it's design. I don't have flashing green ads for cancer care centres on every page here. I don't have to look at reviews of new fast foods (seriously, there are always reviews of fast food on that site, written by SP "experts" even), and there are no points, spinning wheels, flashing ads, etc. here at MFP. It's much more pleasant and straightforward.

At MFP it seems I can discuss what I eat/don't eat without having my posts deleted, and subsequently being warned via email against speaking openly of such a naughty and "dangerous" diet that doesn't involve a bunch of starchy grains and "reduced fat" processed foods.

I think the best way I can articulate the difference between the two sites is that SP seems stuck in the past in pretty much every way imaginable. The site itself is outdated and clunky, the "experts" are not staying abreast of current research in their fields and have no interest in doing so, the site is full of church-lady granny types of all ages who are dying to tattle on someone....it's just too weird, and not for me.

Spark is confusing - and I was always being scolded for not eating enough potassium and nonsense like that. Spark is all about earning points - the rest is secondary.

I had an account at MFP a few years back, did awesome and then fell off the wagon and gained it all back (totally my own fault!). When I decided to try again, I tried signing up for SP. I lasted a day before I got irritated by all the "stuff" - spinning wheels and earning badges and whatnot. I consider myself fairly computer savvy and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to set my exercise goal to 0 and then manually add back in exercises after I have completed them. Setting a goal does nothing for me, I workout so that I can have a treat or else I just will not bother, especially at the beginning. So I created a new MFP account and started here again and am loving it. I still get the irritating emails from SP but they thankfully go to my junk email account. I log on occasionally to use the track my route feature or for an exercise video but thats about it.

I just tried Spark the other day. I didnt like that they wanted me to pay to download the phone app.