Premium vs regular

Lemanna
Lemanna Posts: 1 Member
in Food and Nutrition

Can you still use the barcode to enter food without going premium?

I want to see if I will use this everyday before trying premium.

It seems like about everything I try it forces me to look at premium plans and when I exit, the same thing happens again.

How can I just use the regular way for a time?

Replies

  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 36,585 Member

    In some countries, I understand that the bar code scanner is still available for some people. In the US, it's premium only.

    You can use the regular way. Search by typing in the name of the food or even part of the name, and log that way. Honestly, the scanner can be misleading - those entries in the food database are just typed in by regular users like other food entries, they're not necessarily accurate or up-to-date. I don't even find using the scanner quicker or more efficient, personally - I have premium, never use the scanner.

    Early on, I had free MFP. It has the basics. I lost 50ish pounds using free MFP, maintained for many months using free MFP, only got premium later. I like it for reasons like more control over nutrition, and more reporting about that. It's not essential, but it's nice, IMO.

    Yeah, it will show you ads for premium often, and will always do it if you try to use a premium feature.

  • Kizzy_Ann
    Kizzy_Ann Posts: 50 Member

    Today I tried Premium for one month only. I live in the US. And I gave it a try because I was curious about the meal scanner. Where you take a photo of your plate of food and MFP calculates it for you. I'm impressed and I will joining the yearly soon. Because it's $79 in US for yearly compared to paying $19.99 per month. The only thing it didn't calculate was the extra large fried egg and I searched for that and added that to my breakfast. Pictured is my breakfast.

    Screenshot_20250519_065955_MyFitnessPal.jpg
  • PaulaWallaDingDong
    PaulaWallaDingDong Posts: 4,648 Member

    I always found the barcode scanner to be a major pain. I'd always have to navigate through incorrect matches, which I would have to do anyway by searching manually. So it's not a good selling point for me.

  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 36,585 Member
    https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/comment/48620155#Comment_48620155

    Yeah, me too, even though I have premium - bar codes are less accurate, but more time-consuming and fussy, especially once recent/frequent foods are populated with regularly-eaten items so those come up first by typing just a few letters into search. I also don't like messing with my phone while I'm cooking, so I prefer to jot down what I'm fixing on a scrap paper, and log it after.

    I think sometimes people assume the bar codes are a direct pipeline to current, accurate manufacturer information. In reality they're just whatever was entered by the random user who first scanned that bar code . . . and entered accurately or inaccurately, reflecting a different product formulation than currently accurate, who knows. It's still important to check for accurate details, IMO.

    I experimented with the photo analysis of a whole meal, and found it even less productive. I can see how it might work if eating visually distinctive foods like eggs. Using it on a sandwich, it popped up a semi-random list of foods, only one of which was actually in that sandwich - total time waste. Laughable. For something like soup, stew, stir-fry, it's likely to pop up one of those recipe-type entries in the database ("stir fry, one serving" kind of thing) which tend to be wildly inaccurate or unreliable.

    If these features work well for other people, that's great. But I feel like they were implemented for marketing purposes, kind of a "gee whiz, so easy" temptation . . . but that they aren't accurate or the best long-term approach for users. Just my opinion, though.

  • yirara
    yirara Posts: 10,551 Member

    One question, TO: did you use these amounts of food in your meal? Did you use french fries with this amount of calories? How much oil did you use for the fries and the egg? I don't see it added.

    Look, I'm not trying to talk you out of this. I'm just saying that entries automatically chosen might be wrong, as might be amounts, other things might be missing (cooking oil?)

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