Hey everyone,
I've been building this nutrition tracker and calorie counter recently, after being frustrated by existing products for ages. I built a similar app 8 years ago [1], but came back to this problem again since there are still no good solutions here. Lmk your thoughts and improvement ideas :)
Show HN: Intuitive nutrition information
1–10 of 42 posts
Re: Show HN: Intuitive nutrition information
#2While you certainly succeeded in simplifying the UX, I'm not for simplifying the data on food. Is there any database of "concentrations of vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients" you could integrate?
I know this would defeat the purpose of a "simple" tracker, but I believe that we need to support the message that food is "complex" [1].
Re: Show HN: Intuitive nutrition information
#3That's cool, but it seems to be limited to macros and working under the assumption that a calorie is a calorie.
It would be much more interesting to me to have an easy way to access the information about "how processed" a food is, for example using the NOVA classification[1,2,3] system or something like that. I'm not sure if you can access that as a DB download or an API of some sort, but worth looking into.
If you can't get data on this, then I'm pretty sure you can approximate the nova score by based on the "added sugars" and fibre contents... although it would be difficult to tell apart "undisturbed fibre" vs. fibre added later on as additive.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification [2] https://www.fao.org/3/ca5644en/ca5644en.pdf [3] https://world.openfoodfacts.org/nova
Re: Show HN: Intuitive nutrition information
#4[dead]
Re: Show HN: Intuitive nutrition information
#5Nice! Howabout adding a way to link to a meal?
Re: Show HN: Intuitive nutrition information
#6While you certainly succeeded in simplifying the UX, I'm not for simplifying the data on food. Is there any database of "concentrations of vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients" you could integrate? I know this would defeat the purpose of a "simple" tracker, but I believe that we need to support the message that food is "complex" [1]. [1] https://www.bionutrient.org/bionutrientmeter
Totally - right now it's using the USDA food nutrient database [1] which has all nutrients, so all the nutrients on the back-end are there. Calories is the most important thing to the majority of people (in my experience), so there's a balance between showing too much information vs. keeping things simple. Probably should just add a setting to show everything, though.
Re: Show HN: Intuitive nutrition information
#7That's cool, but it seems to be limited to macros and working under the assumption that a calorie is a calorie. It would be much more interesting to me to have an easy way to access the information about "how processed" a food is, for example using the NOVA classification[1,2,3] system or something like that. I'm not sure if you can access that as a DB download or an API of some sort, but worth looking into. If you c…
Why the hell would a person need an app to tell "how processed" a food is? This is the one bit of information that is contextually obvious.
Re: Show HN: Intuitive nutrition information
#8I entered "Cheerios" and was told one box of Cheerios cereal is 61 calories; and that one box of blueberry Cheerios is 611 calories. So I think that we need better quantification of units than just "box," since presumably these measurements are dealing with boxes of different sizes.
Re: Show HN: Intuitive nutrition information
#9That's cool, but it seems to be limited to macros and working under the assumption that a calorie is a calorie. It would be much more interesting to me to have an easy way to access the information about "how processed" a food is, for example using the NOVA classification[1,2,3] system or something like that. I'm not sure if you can access that as a DB download or an API of some sort, but worth looking into. If you c…
Why the hell would a person need an app to tell "how processed" a food is? This is the one bit of information that is contextually obvious.
It's just a nuance to the rule of thumb, that doesn't warrant such a strong reaction?
If a 1st order rule of thumb is keeping caloric contents in check, a 2nd order rule doing that for nutrients individually, I wonder if someone knows a good but easy third order rule of thumb that takes into account processing.
Something like "when two foods have roughly identical nutrients, prefer the one that has ingredients you could buy or make at home" might either not help cause there are no two such options to choose from, or it's too obvious (fresh pizza at the supermarket is worse than a handmade pizza)
Is there a good rule of thumb that helps you pick relatively healthy foods in a world where many foods are ultra-processed already, and can't really be avoided?
Re: Show HN: Intuitive nutrition information
#10I entered "Cheerios" and was told one box of Cheerios cereal is 61 calories; and that one box of blueberry Cheerios is 611 calories. So I think that we need better quantification of units than just "box," since presumably these measurements are dealing with boxes of different sizes.
Man, those GMO blueberries are really getting out of hand, aren't they?