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

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

#251

Post by boydYVR »

I've felt the same way for years. I used one of the big names for a month about 10 years ago, and it was a great way to learn about my habits and diet, and to experiment with IF (intermittent fasting). I tried it again, now that I'm a serial entrepreneur and single parent... and I just did NOT have the patience for the data entry. I feel same as this article that photos are not a solution. Vodka and water look the same to a camera.

Since April I've been using a tool I developed for myself. It's very much a MVP with an emphasis on M, but it's cheap to run, so I'll share the url if anyone wants to try it out and share feedback.

https://words.my

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

#252

Post by malfist »

wnorris510 wrote: post #183

Founder of https://snapcalorie.com and ex-Google AI researcher here. The article actually gets our pricing wrong, it's completely free to use SnapCalorie, the $79.99 price is a donation to support our research and help us continue providing the best tools to everyone for free. We've published in top peer reviewed academic conferences and our algorithm (can't say the same for other apps) IS actually more accurate than…

How can your AI hope to be accurate. Visually, Can you tell how much butter or oil someone used in the recipe? Visually, Can you tell if it's 73/36 ground beef or 97/3? Can you tell if that taco meet is beef or turkey? Can you tell if that glass of milk is skim or actually just heavy cream?

You can't tell if I cooked my scrambled eggs in the rendered fat from the sausage I cooked just before it, or if I used a teaspoon of olive oil

There's too many sources of calories you just can't see at all. I made jambalaya last night. If I'd sauteed the veggies in a tablespoon of oil or a cup of oil you wouldn't be able to tell.

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

#253

Post by fat_cantor »

const_cast wrote: post #231
jonplackett wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah there's like 2 or 3 foods you realise you're eating that totally mess you up. For me it was peanut butter and sausages (not together...). Just so many calories and it's not like I even cared about either that much.

Yes, there's a lot of low-hanging fruit that is so bad that it's best to just not do it at all. Soda was the big one for me. There's really no responsible way to drink full-sugar soda, it's just too many calories. Oh, and ice cream.

Wait I thought we were supposed to eat more low-hanging fruit...

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

#254

Post by woadwarrior01 »

wahnfrieden wrote: post #192
woadwarrior01 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think it's being used in CalAI though. They don't, but that doesn't stop them from lying about it on their homepage. > Snap a photo with Cal AI, and your phone's depth sensor calculates food volume. Our AI then analyzes and breaks down your meal to determine calories, protein, carbs, and fat. The grift must go on.

Oh interesting. I wouldn't put it past them that they include that data in the input though. Why are you certain they don't? (I guess that they don't, too, because someone reported getting identical calorie readings from giving photos to Gemini 1.5 directly)

They’re using some off the shelf multimodal LLM API, perhaps Gemini 1.5 or something else. And no off the shelf VLM API is capable of handling 4 channel images (RGB+D).

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

#255

Post by wredcoll »

gadders wrote: post #200
reedf1 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that a night out with 4-5 pints might clear my daily total requirement for calories was not something I had really considered until my late twenties.

In your early 20s your metabolism is that much higher as well that it can cope.

Oh so that's why college students famously gain weight when they go to college, they're too old to have a fast metabolism!

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

#256

Post by mminer237 »

malfist wrote: post #252
wnorris510 wrote: post #183

Founder of https://snapcalorie.com and ex-Google AI researcher here. The article actually gets our pricing wrong, it's completely free to use SnapCalorie, the $79.99 price is a donation to support our research and help us continue providing the best tools to everyone for free. We've published in top peer reviewed academic conferences and our algorithm (can't say the same for other apps) IS actually more accurate than…

How can your AI hope to be accurate. Visually, Can you tell how much butter or oil someone used in the recipe? Visually, Can you tell if it's 73/36 ground beef or 97/3? Can you tell if that taco meet is beef or turkey? Can you tell if that glass of milk is skim or actually just heavy cream? You can't tell if I cooked my scrambled eggs in the rendered fat from the sausage I cooked just before it, or if I used a teaspo…

You can just assume an average amount of butter for such a recipe, 80/20 beef, beef, and 2% milk and be reasonably accurate, especially for people who otherwise wouldn't have any idea of their calorie intakes.

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

#257

Post by adrian_b »

squillion wrote: post #241
adrian_b wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good food in the right proportions is necessary, but not sufficient. The total amount of food is at least as important. I eat only good food in the right proportions. However, it would be enough to double the amount of the food that I eat at one meal, for the next day to see a few hundred grams of additional weight. I must plan the amount of food to be eaten before starting to eat. Otherwise, I could eat effortlessly…

Well, I simplified. I said "no calorie counting", not "eat as much as you please". And by "right proportions" in those books they mean something specific: roughly 50% fat, 25% proteins, 25% carbs, plus a balanced mix of different fats, slow carbs, etc. The laws of thermodynamics obviously hold for nutrition as for any other phenomena. In order to lose wait you have to eat less, no question about that. But the idea is…

I agree that calorie counting in the strict meaning is not necessary.

What is necessary is to measure your food, either by mass or by volume, before starting to eat it. For any food that you eat, you should decide some standard portion size that you find by experiment to be suitable for you and you must always eat the standard portion, not random quantities at your whim.

Then, after seeing that you have gained weight after eating 5 spoons of food X, you should decrease the amount to 4 spoons, and so on until you reach amounts of food that keep your weight constant.

What is also important is that for this adjustment you should not decrease or increase the amounts for food items that provide proteins, essential fatty substances, vitamins and minerals, but only the amounts for food items that provide mostly energy, i.e. carbohydrates or non-essential fats.

This is much easier to do when you cook the food yourself, so you control the amounts for each ingredient, than when you buy industrially-produced food, where they have the incentive of mixing every beneficial food ingredient with other ingredients that provide only energy (e.g. starch, sugar, cheap vegetable oils), because the latter are much cheaper than the ingredients that provide essential nutrients, while being tasty or even addictive.

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

#258

Post by Iulioh »

MangoToupe wrote: post #246
Iulioh wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never saw a human use it in something different from literature. That's where I think the chatbots got it.

> I never saw a human use it in something different from literature. This is nuts! Do you not read much prose written by other humans?

I have and had a reddit addiction since my early teens and I read a lot of whatever I can on the internet.

Books and scientific papers are the only places I see it used

And it makes sense that the AI is prioritizing it as these sources should weigh more

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

#259

Post by kamma4434 »

myhf wrote: post #165
kamma4434 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Attention and focus make it work. You must be ‘in it’ - otherwise it wont work.

Of course it will work. Just tell ChatGPT that it is working and it will agree with you.

Your scale may beg to differ - but it’s not AI-based yet.

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

#260

Post by MacNCheese23 »

wnorris510 wrote: post #183

Founder of https://snapcalorie.com and ex-Google AI researcher here. The article actually gets our pricing wrong, it's completely free to use SnapCalorie, the $79.99 price is a donation to support our research and help us continue providing the best tools to everyone for free. We've published in top peer reviewed academic conferences and our algorithm (can't say the same for other apps) IS actually more accurate than…

This is without a doubt the worst App I installed in the last years. It is predatory and has the worst user experience I have ever seen. I'm serious.

It begins with that i haven't even tried out anything, before logging in - that the google store popup comes up that I should rate the App - on the same screen you even tell users please rate us - HOW?? HOW should i rate something now that i havent even used yet.

Then, like in the 20th century i have to supply an e-mail/password and wait for a OTP instead of just using the Google EcoSystem and let me login with my existing Google Account.

After that, i went through at least 10 pages of bullshit were I have to give my information, weight/height/metabolic rate etc - even adjusting the calorie deficit didnt work outright if it is 0 and you want to put a minus before it it just goes away. You first have to enter a postive > 0 value to be able to ad a Minus.

Mind you, i just want to see what that App is about what can it do - i don't want to enter and click next next for a gazillion informations first after being annoyed by "please rate us".

Then, after completing the "setup" i get a fullscreen overlay to annoy me about PREMIUM membership - AGAIN I HAVE NOT USED ONE SINGLE FUNCTION OF YOUR APP YET.

But not enough, I want to try it out with a photo from my meal today and on the camera lense screen it annoys me again with PREMIUM!!! You can only do 3 Photos a day. Dude your app is so predatory its just trash.

Then i select the photo from the gallery and have to CROP it??? Its a fullscreen picture of just the meal - nothing else and you annoy me with cropping it?

Then, the actual function - while it recognized my meal it was off by the calorie count and weight by a factor of 2. The same picture, for free, google gemini flash recognized correctly too and gave an accurate display of average calories (it approx. 450g). I added the exact weight to gemini afterwards to have the correct estimation and it gave me the real value.

I tried to do the same in your app, instead of 300g i edited the entry and choose 600g. And clicked save. I was puzzled that nothing changed. Then i saw the portion size went from 1 to 0.5 - just by me changing from 300g to 600g. What a stupid user experience. So i had to change the weight AND return back the portion size to 1.

Again, everything your App does apart from massively annoying users, gemini and chatgpt can do better for free.

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