MFP Encourages "Convenience" Nutrition

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!

Yes, 100% This is the reason I no longer log my food. When you eat a variety of home prepared foods from whole ingredients this site is not user friendly for logging meals.

I do it all the time, and I find it very user friendly. So I'd say it's not the tool (MFP) that encourages the 'convenience' nutrition, but the user. I add in meals that I do frequently so I just have one click to do it later. I add in recipes I make so I can add those easily. I've been doing this a year now, and I have no problem with recipes, meals, and whole foods/ingredients.

I'm sure it is easier if you have recipes you frequently use. But, I never use a recipe. I am a 'little bit of this, little bit of that' type cook. And even trying to look up something as simple as a red tomato will yield more than a dozen entries, so you either randomly pick one hoping it is correct, or you have to go to another site to get the correct information, then come back here and weed through all the entries till you find one that is correct and complete, or add a new one and add to the mess.

I logged for over a year. I used the recipe feature, which in itself is problematic in that it won't let you change amounts of ingredients. But it just took so much of my time. It was like having a second job.

Actually the tool being complained about - the phone app that enables easy *scanning* - will allow you edit quantities of ingredients. I do this all the time. Go to the same recipe, edit the weights. If I use oil instead of butter, change butter quantity to 0 and change oil to one tbsp or whatever. This literally takes seconds. Most of the "trouble" is in setting up the original recipe and then you're good to go. And I don't even use the website where the asterisk beside some entries is visible - this is good to know, I may use the website to add an ingredient for the first time in the future.

But like another member, again I would wonder about your having used the site for a year and participated in forums. There's tips flying around left and right all the time. And unless you eat exotic and new ingredients every single day of your life, after one year your frequent foods would be extremely easy to access, and you would know the calorie count of most foods and veg you use frequently. *shrugs*

Wait. WHAT?!

:laugh:

I don't know if your comment was regarding my rambling on and on, or the functionality, so I will attempt to clarify both.

In the iPhone app, if I go to Settings --> My Foods and Exercises --> My Recipes, I can find existing recipes and click into them to edit them. For example I can click into my "Curried Honey Mustard Chicken" recipe. In this recipe I have entries for chicken breast, chicken thighs, and chicken breast tenderloins because I make it using whatever chicken I happen to have on hand. If made with chicken thighs, the quantity for chicken breasts or chicken breasts tenderloins would be set to 0, while the actual chicken thigh weight / calories are logged accurately. Likewise if I choose to make the recipe using light butter instead of full fat butter, light is set to 14g/50 calories and full is set to 0. This way I can use the same recipe to support multiple tweaks.

The idea here is to leverage the fact that when you log an entry , and later edit the recipe, MFP still maintains the fidelity of your previous entry - calories counts, macro & micronutrients, etc, while letting you update the recipe for future use.

Hmm... If I'm still way off here, you'll have to be more specific hahah

Um. No. I just didn't know that was a thing on the app, but then I don't use the app much.

Yeah it is. But I shouldn't have to go get the app every time I want to edit a recipe. It ought to be simple to make the PC version have the same feature. I don't like the app and I avoid it as much as possible.