MFP alternatives

A pen and paper.

That's exactly what I do and it does not take much time. If you enjoy the meal,save it for maybe some time in the same week or later in the month.

I am on a plan diet-I add my recipes and foods in to the My Foods and My Recipes and use the frequent list-done in no time and the info is saved for later use-the more you add to your database the faster and easier it becomes.

When you go to the database and type an ingredient, for example cinnamon, the very first thing in the list should be cinnamon, plain and simple, instead you get Apple Cinnamon Chex. It would be nice if I could just filter out all of the brand name stuff and simply enter actual ingredients.

Couldn't agree more. I have to wonder if there's a reason that brand name crap comes up first in cases like that. Is MFP getting a kick back for this from other companies? I somehow doubt it, but it just seems to weird that "cinnamon" wouldn't be the first result.

At any rate, I've sort of learned to live with it. I eat a lot of the same stuff when I pack work lunches or go out to eat, so I just skim through my "recent foods" and only have to actually look up new things about 25% of the time.

Not trying to be negative, but a lot of your problems have solutions, so hopefully you found those posts helpful.
Have you tried the phone app? I find some things better online and some things better on the app.
Failing that, maybe forget about the pubic database and start slowly building your own on here, might be easier than pen and paper.

It is strange that it is very common for people to reply to this complaint by saying they mostly eat the same things. People who agree or disagree both say this. Have you ever wondered why that is, perhaps you've trained yourself to eat the same foods over and over to make it easier to log. I know I have. I was just discussing how variety makes eating right so much easier and more fun (especially true for vegans). I want the freedom to try something new on a whim, or to not have the same meal twice in a month, the current system doesn't make that easy, in fact, in reinforces the exact opposite behavior.

I can look up and log any meal in three minutes. It doesn't matter if I've had it before or not. I think you are making this way harder than it needs to be.

I don't eat all the same things. I just know how to use an alphabetized list.

I agree. And this site is FREE. If I were paying for this service, I would expect more too, but I'm not, so I don't. Beggars can't be choosers.

I MFP. The database is cluttered but I have figured my way around it pretty good. What foods do you have a problem logging?

When you go to the database and type an ingredient, for example cinnamon, the very first thing in the list should be cinnamon, plain and simple, instead you get Apple Cinnamon Chex. It would be nice if I could just filter out all of the brand name stuff and simply enter actual ingredients.

Same problem. I absolutely hate most user entered stuff because everyone has a different focus and I never know what the person who entered the item was interested in. Some things have no macros, some don't bother to add sodium. Most days now I just use the standard ones because I like that I can weigh my milk etc.. Not being able to use my 'recent' /'my foods' in recipes really blows also. Honestly.. even for a retarded coder it shouldn't be THAT hard to have a check box to exclude user items.

For format and information including Glycemic Index, Glycemic Load, and breakdown of proteins, nutritiondata.self.com is pretty impressive. But, I do find their food database is very limited unless you eat out a lot or buy a lot of processed foods and the search capabilities are really lacking. For example, I tried to search on fresh fruit and had to wade through many pages of canned fruit in syrup and frozen fruit. How is canned or frozen fruit considered fresh? And for a service that touts itself on Glycemic Index counts, you'd think they'd have a lot under breads and starchy foods, but they really don't. It's still worth a visit to get some good information, but don't expect to find many exotic things in their database.

I'm constantly amazed that I can find items already in the MFP database that I pick up from import markets and even product that are only locally carried. I've only had to add a handful of items to the community collective in many months. Most of the entries are accurate and the few that aren't are usually OK on calories but missing other nutrients and I will update those when I find them.