Got a suggestion on how to improve MyFitnessPal? Share it in this category or vote to tell us what you think of other people’s suggestions. Please be sure to review the Feature Suggestion submissions guidelines.

Custom Barcodes

verdejt
verdejt Posts: 24 Member
edited October 2022 in Feature Suggestions and Ideas
One thing that annoys me sometimes is that it sometimes takes a long time to select one of my custom meals or recipes. Then for my wife to enter it in herself she has to do a quick add or navigate to my data and select it. So my solution is to create custom barcodes for my foods. After some research I have it working great. Now when we have one of our custom meals/foods all she has to do is scan the barcode I generated and poof it's all there. In case you are interested here is how I came up with mine. The first digit is a 0 which means that it's just a regular barcode. The next 5 digits are the manufacturer ID number. Usually assigned by the UCC Council. However if you are never intending to sell your product you can come up with your own which I did and if you search online you can find a search engine that will tell you after you put in a particular UPC whether that is a live product or not. The next 5 digits are a custom sequence number which can be anything you want it to be. The last digit is a check digit that if you search online you can find a check digit calculator. Once you have your bar code data there are numerous free websites that will generate an actual barcode for you. Now just save it to a document and scan it in MFP it will prompt you to create a new food. Now just enter your data. I tested it and when my wife scans my barcodes my custom foods pop up in her MFP diary.
2
Up
2 votes

Active · Last Updated

Replies

  • CyberTone
    CyberTone Posts: 7,337 Member
    Ingenious! Lots of set up work, but very creative.

    The one tiny drawback is that food items that are associated with a barcode are by default in the Public Food Database. As such, someone who stumbles on it through a text search might find it and decide to edit the nutrition information. If that happens, that user would take over ownership of the item and it would drop off of your My Foods list. I would recommend keeping a running list of names so that you can find them again if that ever happens. Also, the other user could edit the name or brand/restaurant field, but you could pull it up by just scanning your custom barcode, edit it and take over the ownership again.
  • verdejt
    verdejt Posts: 24 Member
    What about if I make it private or available to only friends
  • CyberTone
    CyberTone Posts: 7,337 Member
    verdejt wrote: »
    What about if I make it private or available to only friends

    As far as I can tell, in the current design, all foods associated with a barcode become shared items in the Public Food Database. But, I could be wrong, or MFP could be redesigning the Food Database. Who knows?
  • JFTB0762
    JFTB0762 Posts: 1 Member
    verdejt wrote: »
    One thing that annoys me sometimes is that it sometimes takes a long time to select one of my custom meals or recipes. Then for my wife to enter it in herself she has to do a quick add or navigate to my data and select it. So my solution is to create custom barcodes for my foods. After some research I have it working great. Now when we have one of our custom meals/foods all she has to do is scan the barcode I generated and poof it's all there. In case you are interested here is how I came up with mine. The first digit is a 0 which means that it's just a regular barcode. The next 5 digits are the manufacturer ID number. Usually assigned by the UCC Council. However if you are never intending to sell your product you can come up with your own which I did and if you search online you can find a search engine that will tell you after you put in a particular UPC whether that is a live product or not. The next 5 digits are a custom sequence number which can be anything you want it to be. The last digit is a check digit that if you search online you can find a check digit calculator. Once you have your bar code data there are numerous free websites that will generate an actual barcode for you. Now just save it to a document and scan it in MFP it will prompt you to create a new food. Now just enter your data. I tested it and when my wife scans my barcodes my custom foods pop up in her MFP diary.

    Hi,

    I know this is old but could you message me of what software you used, this is exactly what I am looking for :)

    Cheers mate

  • daniellej89
    daniellej89 Posts: 3 Member
    @JFTB0762 did you find out how to do this? :)
  • kaygee527
    kaygee527 Posts: 2 Member
    Looking to see if anyone found out how to actually do this... this is exactly what i have been searching FOREVER for!!
  • MelanieCN77
    MelanieCN77 Posts: 4,047 Member
    Once you have your number you can search for any “barcode generator” which will make a graphic for you on the fly.
  • kmarin125
    kmarin125 Posts: 1 Member
    :) Verdejt you are genious! And the only person I could find that gave actual instructions how to do this. Thank you for the explanation of how to make the upc code <3 I just did one for one of my vegan recipes.
  • saffroncarey
    saffroncarey Posts: 1 Member
    Hi, I’m a cafe owner and would like to create barcodes to the products I sell, does this make a difference would I still be able to do the same as what you have done here? Thanks in advance!
  • Salsacalienteni
    Salsacalienteni Posts: 2 Member
    verdejt wrote: »
    One thing that annoys me sometimes is that it sometimes takes a long time to select one of my custom meals or recipes. Then for my wife to enter it in herself she has to do a quick add or navigate to my data and select it. So my solution is to create custom barcodes for my foods. After some research I have it working great. Now when we have one of our custom meals/foods all she has to do is scan the barcode I generated and poof it's all there. In case you are interested here is how I came up with mine. The first digit is a 0 which means that it's just a regular barcode. The next 5 digits are the manufacturer ID number. Usually assigned by the UCC Council. However if you are never intending to sell your product you can come up with your own which I did and if you search online you can find a search engine that will tell you after you put in a particular UPC whether that is a live product or not. The next 5 digits are a custom sequence number which can be anything you want it to be. The last digit is a check digit that if you search online you can find a check digit calculator. Once you have your bar code data there are numerous free websites that will generate an actual barcode for you. Now just save it to a document and scan it in MFP it will prompt you to create a new food. Now just enter your data. I tested it and when my wife scans my barcodes my custom foods pop up in her MFP diary.

  • Salsacalienteni
    Salsacalienteni Posts: 2 Member
    Just started on my journey to a better me. Following your instructions i have got this to work for me and it is so helpful. Now when i meal prep all the macros are stored on my computer with recipe and barcode. Thanks verdejt
  • amdono
    amdono Posts: 1 Member
    How are you coming up with your random barcode number? The few I tested didn't work/scan with mfp?

Categories