I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse than expected

Post by jurgenkesker » Mon, Jun 09, 2025, 12:57 PM UTC

vjulian wrote: post #105

I use ChatGPT (4o model) to track my daily macros, specifically calories, protein, fat, and carbs. I have a prompt containing my macro targets and a list of the foods I typically eat or have at home. Throughout the day, I report my meals, for example five large eggs, two slices of sprouted wheat toast, and a cup of spinach with a pat of butter. It calculates the macros for each meal and keeps a running macros total s…

Post by jonplackett » Mon, Jun 09, 2025, 12:58 PM UTC

gavinray wrote: post #103

jonplackett wrote: post #55

I always just assumed these were terrible. There just isn’t enough info in a photo, even for the world’s leading calorie counting expert, to give a sensible estimate of the calories content. Ans even more so for macros. Add to that the fact vision is still pretty crap and you have a complete joke that I can’t believe anyone is paying for.

I have faith that ML can approximate calories from images under the following conditions: - The food is inside containers of a standard size, which the model can use as a volumetric reference - Optimally, the containers are clear plastic, for depth approximation - The food is homogenous, or mostly-homogenous. Dishes containing a lot of mixed ingredients seem like an intractable problem to me Now, whether or not abili…

Post by zeta0134 » Mon, Jun 09, 2025, 1:01 PM UTC

devmor wrote: post #101

zeta0134 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly the main thing was learning that perfectly satisfying food I cook at home tends to land around 600-800 cal for a meal, where eating out almost anywhere is often twice that, even if my beverage is water. Just being aware how how heavy those otherwise delightful meals are gives me pause. Granted these figures are all a side effect of my personal eating habits and preferences, but that's rather the point of the…

Eating out, especially in the US, is horrifying when you look at serving calories. Why does every major restaurant feature individual meals with a caloric intake of an entire day’s energy?

Post by n4r9 » Mon, Jun 09, 2025, 1:11 PM UTC

yreg wrote: post #107

cainxinth wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You develop a sixth sense for how calorific foods are when you track calories consistently. I kept a meticulous food journal for about six months before I realized I didn’t really need to anymore because I had gotten so good at just estimating my totals. Protip: most people underestimate the calories in alcohol

> most people underestimate the calories in alcohol Funny, I feel the other way around. I kept hearing about how much calories there are in alcohol, and then when I started calorie counting I didn't find it so high. Like 6 shots of gin are ~550kcal and enough to get anyone pretty drunk. Unless one is a regular heavy drinker it's not that hard to once in a while budget calories during the day to be able to get a few s…

Post by jurgenkesker » Mon, Jun 09, 2025, 1:12 PM UTC

nvahalik wrote: post #30

I work for a company that offers nutrition tracking on an app in the App Store. We are not shipping camera functionality yet. But our concept is to not necessarily guarantee the accuracy of portions but to make lookup easier. We also spent the time to get the AI integrated with a verified database. This made our results far more accurate. We tended to find that without the lookup the calories and macros would be gene…