Be Careful When Using The Database

Diogenes spent his lifetime looking for an accurate database entry.

Colorscheme wrote: »

SCoil123 wrote: »

Don't trust labels 100% either. Legally they can be up to 15% off on total calories per serving. A nutritionist warned me of this when helping me find a good protein shake and I believe it to be true.

It's actually 20 percent and it's per serving size. So if something has two servings, it could be up to 40 percent more in terms of calories. But if you weigh everything then that's not an issue.

First part is right, but the number of servings is irrelevant. It's a constant %, so it doesn't change with quantity.

Yup. Inaccurate entries is the one downside to MFP's database, and when I could die by using an inaccurate entry (I'm diabetic and take insulin based off how many carbs I consume, which I calculate through MFP. Being of by 20g of carbs is enough to possibly kill me from hypoglycemia), verifying entries with other resources (food label, USDA, etc.) is critical.

PaulaWallaDingDong wrote: »

Annahbananas wrote: »

If you use the scanner icon in the food lists, this will activate your camera. This will grab the UPC code of the food in your hand and will give you the exact food nutritional content.

I always use this. Just take your phone or tablet to the grocery score and scan the foods u want.

This is how I do it. This way you don't grab a user inputed information. I've been doing this every time since I started and always got accurate readings

I get wrong ones all the time. Can't scan a barcode without also checking the result against the label.

Yeah, and I've also found that when I use the barcode, even if the nutritional information is correct, more often than not it brings up an entry that doesn't have the option for grams. Since I weigh everything I eat, it's useless to me.

I've noticed that the biggest discrepencies tend to be in sodium levels. The most obvious problem is that people putting values in are putting the number in for salt, rather than just sodium. The other one, which makes a massive difference, is people's inability to convert from g to mg. I'm finding sodium levels to be a factor of 1000 or even 10 or 100 out.

Thankfully, I'm not bothered about strictly monitoring my sodium intake, but it would be problematic for people who do want or need to.

dragon_girl26 wrote: »

PaulaWallaDingDong wrote: »

Annahbananas wrote: »

If you use the scanner icon in the food lists, this will activate your camera. This will grab the UPC code of the food in your hand and will give you the exact food nutritional content.

I always use this. Just take your phone or tablet to the grocery score and scan the foods u want.

This is how I do it. This way you don't grab a user inputed information. I've been doing this every time since I started and always got accurate readings

I get wrong ones all the time. Can't scan a barcode without also checking the result against the label.

Yeah, and I've also found that when I use the barcode, even if the nutritional information is correct, more often than not it brings up an entry that doesn't have the option for grams. Since I weigh everything I eat, it's useless to me.

It's still useful. If you're scanning the product then you can definitely see the gram weight on your package and use that. Say you have a protein bar and it has a 50 gram serving size, but you have a 52 gram bar. You scan the package and the nutritional information is correct but it has no weight in grams. Just do 52/50 and you get 1.04, which is the serving that you input. If you have don't have a terminating decimal, just round it appropriately. I usually round to the nearest hundredth, so if I have 1.107423... servings of something I input it as 1.11