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Logging food
Three ways to log a meal. Each is fastest for something different, and picking wrong is why logging feels slow.
Barcode for anything with a packet — the numbers are the manufacturer's. Photo for a plate you assembled or were served. Search for staples and anything you'll eat again, because once saved it's a single tap forever.
A barcode is the only method that gives you figures the manufacturer printed rather than an average of what other people typed in. Two taps, and the protein is theirs, not a guess.
The step people get wrong is the portion. Scanning tells the app what you ate, not how much — and most apps then default to 100 g, which is three slices of bread or two-thirds of a tube of crisps. A good scanner opens at one slice or one biscuit instead, using the count the pack states. A pack reading "400 g (20 slices)" has already told you a slice is 20 g.
Open Food Facts is community-maintained and enormous, but two things happen regularly: the product isn't there at all, or it's there with a name, a brand and no nutrition whatsoever. The second is more annoying, because the app looks like it worked.
NutriMacro estimates the missing panel in that case, marks it plainly as an estimate, and — importantly — keeps it. The next person to scan that product anywhere gets the answer immediately, without another estimate being made. The database gets better as people use it.
A curry, a stir-fry, a plate in a restaurant — these have no barcode and no clean database entry. Photographing them is the difference between an approximate log and no log at all, and the second is far worse for your week.
Expect the photo to be good at identification and reasonable on portions. It will tell you there's chicken, rice and a sauce, and estimate each. Adjust the one that looks off and move on. Precision here is not the point; completeness is.
Search is slowest the first time and fastest forever after. Most people rotate about eight breakfasts. Log each properly once, and every subsequent morning is one tap from your recent list.
It's also the right tool for unpackaged basics — an egg, a banana, chicken breast — where there's no barcode to scan and no plate worth photographing.
Logging in the evening. Recall shrinks portions and drops items entirely. Log as you go.
Fighting the portion field. If the app insists on grams for food that comes in slices, you're doing arithmetic at every meal. See what portions actually weigh.
Perfectionism. Hunting for the exact brand of tomato for six minutes costs more than the five calories it saves. Close enough, logged, beats exact and abandoned — which is the whole argument in how to log food accurately.
Yes, for packaged food — it carries the manufacturer's own panel. A photo estimates. Use each where it belongs rather than forcing one to cover everything.
Lookups need a connection, but previously scanned products come back instantly from what's already stored.
Log the whole recipe once, tell the app how many portions it made, and log portions from then on.
Get NutriMacro — barcode, photo and search in one app, alongside your training and recovery.
