[HN Gopher] I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they we...
___________________________________________________________________
I used AI-powered calorie counting apps, and they were even worse
than expected
Author : gnabgib
Score : 222 points
Date : 2025-06-08 23:25 UTC (23 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lifehacker.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (lifehacker.com)
| muratsu wrote:
| These apps look gimmicky but they are growing like crazy. CalAI,
| for example, is making 35M+/yr. I'm hoping that some people
| really find value in these apps and that they are not just a pure
| marketing driven play.
| tekla wrote:
| They provide value in that they lie to you and you feel better
| about yourself.
| klabb3 wrote:
| That's exactly what I was thinking when I read the article.
| "Why are you thinking this is meant to work?". But of course,
| normal trusting people will believe it if it's on the
| "trusted app stores".
|
| These apps with graphs are just selling you a sense of
| control, of compulsive metric driven decision making. Its
| partly the consumers' own fault - many people won't care even
| if they knew. But it's also predatory by the companies. It's
| consumer tech in a nutshell: put a pretty but shitty app on
| the App Store, spend 80% on marketing, show ads in the free
| tier, sell overpriced premium offerings to those who are
| careless with money, rinse and repeat. I follow some
| subreddits and groups for "entrepreneurs" and it's just like
| this.
| muratsu wrote:
| I don't mind if the reality of their business is similar to
| gyms in the sense that they make money off of peoples desires
| but have low utilization.
|
| I used calorie counter apps before and they helped me lose
| weight (by mostly educating me what to eat/avoid). With these
| apps, I feel like the core premise - counting calories -
| isn't even working and they're selling people hopes and
| dreams. That's danger territory.
| xnx wrote:
| > CalAI, for example, is making 35M+/yr.
|
| Source?
| debuggerson wrote:
| I happened to scroll through the founder's interview on
| YouTube. You may take a look.
| https://youtu.be/t0U3UREdjmo?si=14oeWqtL9oVszab5
| asdev wrote:
| I wouldn't trust the revenue numbers, plus the churn is
| probably insanely high. Flashes in the pan
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| There is good money in the App Store once you crack social
| marketing. The founder shows several videos of reloading the
| App Store Connect page showing revenue numbers. It's not
| unbelievable.
|
| (Not to defend the app itself obviously)
| AstroBen wrote:
| What's going on with the google reviews of that app.. basically
| all 5 star with one word over and over again - 'good'
|
| They're solicited, right?
| m_ke wrote:
| I've heard from someone who knows that they're scamming
| people like crazy. Supposedly they also setup a bunch of LLCs
| to hire influencers then never paid them.
| thierrydamiba wrote:
| I think a claim like that requires proof. You're accusing
| them of fraud.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Is fraud not a reasonable assumption, when an app that
| fundamentally does not do what it claims to, nonetheless
| has legions of glowing reviews?
|
| In the best scenario we are in a TornadoGuard
| (https://xkcd.com/937/) situation. More likely the
| developers are paying for reviews
| TuringTourist wrote:
| I suspect this might be because diet marketing before AI was
| one of the most fraught with misinformation subjects you could
| run across. This is because the "sale" of the idea has an
| effect on every salesman, so all of the salesmen are trying to
| sell every thing at once,since that's also selling their thing,
| and ground truth gets stampeded. Now when you combine diet
| marketing and AI, you get a multiplier. Both in the sellers and
| the buyers, since the desire to believe is stacked.
| jimjimjim wrote:
| This makes me sad. Yes a fool and their money are soon parted
| but this drives user expectations for apps even lower, pushing
| competent apps out of the market because of the price
| difference.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Gimmicky my ass. I speak a sentence every night on a thread to
| ChatGPT about what I had for breakfast, lunch and dinner along
| with quantities and it spits out my macros and nutritional
| breakdowns effectively. It's the easiest and most no nonsense way
| I have found to record this information. Since it's all on the
| same thread it always outputs the data in the same format and I
| can ask it for information over custom time ranges on the fly.
| I've also uploaded the nutritional labels for all my protein
| shakes and supplements to the same thread so I can just say "I
| had my nighttime shake" and it knows what I am talking about
| immediately.
| rahidz wrote:
| >I speak a sentence every night on a thread to ChatGPT about
| what I had for breakfast, lunch and dinner along with
| quantities and it spits out my macros and nutritional
| breakdowns effectively.
|
| Have you verified that these are mostly accurate?
| ineedasername wrote:
| I do this too and it's been spot on. I also have a very good
| idea of what I'm eating though: "2 oz of steel cut oats, 1
| banana, probably about 4oz by weight, without the peal, about
| 12 ounces of coffee with 1 tsp of sugar and about 4oz of
| light no-sugar almond milk"
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Yes, a lot initially and now I've looked at them so much I
| can roughly tell without looking it up.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Not OP, but I _have_ verified, and it _is_ accurate. At least
| accurate enough from images or descriptions when assuming
| average proportions. Where it 's really accurate is when you
| have measurements, even rough. I took to having a 1/2 cup
| scoop around the house so I could get volume measurements.
|
| Initially I verified against labels by eating the serving
| size precisely. Then, I switched to weighing and doing the
| math on random days or meals.
|
| For some items I would tell it the calories and macros and it
| would remember (a pb spoon is a common treat around my
| house).
|
| It's good.
|
| But like all food journalling the benefits are not so much
| having macro balances or tallies, its in making you aware and
| making you think about what you're eating. That alone takes
| you out of autopilot and lets you eat better.
|
| It's just bad at math. So I would ask it to output a json
| struct for each day, that I could inspect by sight, then I'd
| save that and had a python script to actually tally.
|
| I had predictive analytics and the whole 9 yards. Maybe I
| should have started a business!
| https://jodavaho.io/tags/diet.html
| DontchaKnowit wrote:
| This is different than the style of ai calorue app that
| extrapolates caloric content from pictures of your food. That
| kind is gimmicky BS
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| The app is also using a low quality and outdated model
| (Gemini 1.5) to reduce costs, whereas this poster is likely
| using GPT 4o
| bigmadshoe wrote:
| Tasks like summing a bunch of numbers from different parts of
| the input over a specific time period are still pretty error
| prone for LLMs. I would exercise caution if these results are
| important to you. A database or spreadsheet is going to be far
| more reliable - maybe you could have ChatGPT output a
| structured format and you could do the summation in a google
| sheet?
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Yeah I know, it's not something I need do a lot.
| tcoff91 wrote:
| Read the article. What you are doing has nothing to do with the
| apps the article is talking about.
|
| You are providing accurate info to an LLM and it is assisting
| you with information processing.
|
| These apps are trying to just take a picture of arbitrary food
| and just trusting a neural network to be magical and tell you
| the macros in the food from a photo.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| I actually think it's quicker to just speak to the LLM about
| your diet than even taking a picture. But yes, I understand
| what you're saying.
| jaronheard wrote:
| I like how in the article the author includes the instructions
| for Cal AI: - Include a reference object (like a coin or your
| hand) for scale And then the screenshots show just a pictures of
| bowls of food with no reference objects at all.
|
| Honestly curious if that would have improved the author's
| experience.
| PlunderBunny wrote:
| I noticed that too - I wonder if the coin/hand was cropped out?
| horsawlarway wrote:
| I'm guessing yes. I think you can even see half a coin in the
| cropped photo of the tofu salad (lower right edge, under the
| metal bowl).
| TeaVMFan wrote:
| I prefer efficient manual entry to vibe-coding calories. I built
| my own Java-based SPA: https://frequal.com/cf/
|
| It's local-first so you control this sensitive information. It
| features easy reuse and exercise tracking.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Also, a certain level of human involvement is what gets you to
| really care and change behavior.
|
| I exploit my "frugality" neuroses by treating calories as an
| expense.
| tunesmith wrote:
| Weird article, it mentions three apps at the beginning, doesn't
| even test two of them in favor of two others it didn't mention,
| and then declares all the apps failures.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Funny, I was just discussing this on HN a few days ago:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44185892
|
| There's a lot of questions about the nutritional content of food
| which you can't answer just by looking at a photo, like "is that
| a glass of whole milk or non-fat", or "are those vegetables
| glossy because they're damp or because they're covered in
| butter". No amount of AI magic is going to solve that.
| dwetterau wrote:
| It will get to the point where it could know to ask those
| questions, like a human would. Clearly these tools are not
| there yet, but I think the models are probably good enough for
| this already.
| bitmasher9 wrote:
| It's probably the only thing that would get me to start
| taking photos of my food, but it would need to be about as
| accurate as I am in chronometer.
| hammock wrote:
| Those are easy manual adjustments to make. Far easier than
| estimating an entire meal
| fullshark wrote:
| Maybe in aggregate they are fine if the noise is unbiased and you
| do some things like correct it when it says an apple is tikka
| masala, but yeah, someone using this and lying to themselves
| about the calorie content of junk/comfort food seems pretty
| likely.
| nvahalik wrote:
| 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 generally correct. The math was usually within a margin
| of error of 5%. This was acceptable except that... there was no
| micronutrient values and you couldn't really adjust the portions
| at all. The system just dumps the macros and while you can halve
| something... the user experience isn't great.
|
| Ultimately, if you want precision: manual entry is the only way
| to go. I feel like out approach will end up being very great once
| we work out the kinks. Our search isn't spectacular and as a team
| we are learning a lot of about prompt engineering and how to make
| best use of the AI.
| irrational wrote:
| Does that work for homemade food as well? The vast majority of
| the food we eat is homemade with recipes that don't have any
| sort of nutritional information. I've always wished there was a
| simple way to figure out the calories. Taking a picture would
| be ideal.
| adrian_b wrote:
| For homemade food it should be easier to make reliable
| estimates of the calorie content, because you know with
| certainty all the food ingredients and their amounts.
|
| The food ingredients with the highest calorie content, like
| various kinds of seeds or nuts or flour or meal or oil or fat
| or sugar or dried fruits or dairy products, come usually with
| calorie estimates from their vendors.
|
| For other ingredients, like various kinds of meat or of fresh
| vegetables or fruits, there are online databases with typical
| nutritional information, like the USDA database. Some of that
| information can even be found in the corresponding Wikipedia
| pages.
| nvahalik wrote:
| Absolutely.
|
| Weighing everything (rather than using volumetric measures)
| is generally going to be the BEST way to ensure consistency
| and accuracy.
|
| What's also important is that, in general, even if you are
| 20% off on something (e.g. I logged 2200 calories but I
| actually consumed 2600 calories) AND you are planning to
| eat at a caloric deficit, this usually will mean that you
| will still lose weight or body recomp. It'll just take a
| little more time.
|
| But if you are just not tracking, it's _so easy_ to
| miscalculate your intake to the point where you think "oh
| this isn't that bad." However, the truth is you consumed
| 4200 calories and that's a big surplus.
|
| So I/we tend to find the value partially in "simple
| tracking" to get you aware of what you are actually
| consuming and then find that transitioning to specific
| portions to be helpful for "dialing in" and achieving
| specific targets/goals.
| jurgenkesker wrote:
| Yes, I would think that would work better indeed. As a
| augmentation or help tool. I would love to be able to say to
| MyFitnessPal that 'I ate this and that food, same as usual, and
| oh yeah drank this.' Just as a easier input interface. I
| wouldn't trust a pure AI solution without some proper database
| behind it.
| nvahalik wrote:
| Yeah. The big problem is that "augmentation" is hard because
| we (humans) have an internal process for how we think about
| things that is hard to define and building a flowchart for
| how we understand foods doesn't even necessarily capture
| things. Very well. You can take something like "chocolate
| chip pancakes" where the context can be "<brand> <item>" or
| "<modifier> <food item>". And then you can search.
|
| But even though we've integrated it with a good food
| database, the process of searching isn't great because
| sometimes things like brand names don't get recognized and/or
| modifiers may get confused because... is it a brand? Is it a
| way of preparing something?
|
| Ultimately we are working on improving how our search works
| by not just searching by the name, but by getting information
| about brand, the product, and possible serving options as
| well. These would better inform the search and allow us to,
| say, fallback without a brand if we can't find the brand.
|
| The other problem has to do with variant detection. I can say
| "kirkland sous vide egg bites" but there are 3-4 variants of
| them. And right now most databases are just "here is the item
| you requested" without looking at possible variants, which is
| a problem that we are going to end up solving ourselves.
|
| It's been interesting because we've learned a lot about how
| people "think" it should work vs. how it actually works.
| cowanon2222 wrote:
| I've had pretty good results using the AI features in
| Macrofactor. It's certainly not perfect, but it does a pretty
| good job with mixed text and photos and allows you to easily
| fine-tune the results.
|
| Macrofactor is also the only app I've seen that actually
| estimates your underlying metabolic rate and adjusts accordingly.
| It predates the recent AI surge, and seems to have a team that's
| studied nutrition science behind it.
| thearrow wrote:
| Same. I was very skeptical when Macrofactor introduced this
| feature, but have since been incredibly impressed. The ability
| to give it text alongside a photo and then adjust the results
| (broken out by ingredients) are critical. I've also been taking
| pictures of food sitting on scales and it will take the
| measurement into account.
|
| Seems like the Macrofactor team took their time developing this
| feature, as it felt like they were one of the last to roll it
| out, but the extra polish definitely shows and was worth the
| wait.
| Kiyo-Lynn wrote:
| I've tried a few AI-powered calorie tracking tools too. At first
| it felt super convenient, just take a photo and get the numbers.
| But over time I kept seeing mistakes. Sometimes it would even tag
| a salad as soup. Eventually I went back to the old way. Fewer
| photos, more mindful eating. Honestly I feel better that way.
| spacecadet wrote:
| Honestly this is it for me. Im actively trying to reduce my
| reliance on tech, even more so when it comes to gimmick tech. A
| nightly walk with no phone will make you drop pounds too...
| solumunus wrote:
| I genuinely can't understand why anyone would even TRY using
| these apps. Of course they're going to be terrible, but how could
| anyone with a modicum of intelligence suspect otherwise?
| surfmike wrote:
| The founder of parrotpal (another AI calorie tracking app,
| supporting both text and photos) points out that using photos is
| one of the least accurate ways for tracking food:
| https://www.instagram.com/parrot.pal/reel/DAB9NtfM250/
|
| Users also seem to like using photos less than text for food
| tracking: https://www.instagram.com/p/DBoSeQzM3bQ/
|
| The author of this article seems to be against the concept of
| calorie counting as a whole too, but calorie counting does work
| well for many people. They also bring up intuitive eating as an
| alternative, but intuitive eating is not intended for weight loss
| while that's what calorie tracking is usually used for (though it
| can also be used for maintenance and for weight gain).
|
| Personally, after using MyFitnessPal for a couple years,
| switching to ParrotPal made calorie counting way less time-I just
| need to give it a quick text (or voice) description and it does a
| surprisingly good job of estimating. There are a few times when I
| need to adjust it, I mostly try to overestimate. It's not
| perfectly accurate but it gives me enough accuracy to have
| successfully lost and kept my weight off.
| tayo42 wrote:
| > seems to be against the concept of calorie counting as a
| whole too
|
| What are peoples criticisms of calorie counting? Its the only
| thing that keeps my weight from creeping up. There are way to
| many calorie dense foods that can easily sneak in if im
| thoughtless. (I want my 20 year old life style back :( )
| schmichael wrote:
| My unprofessional nutritional advice is: do what works for
| you! So if that's calorie counting: great! No need to give it
| a second thought.
|
| But if you are interested in critiques, a fair summary might
| be: calorie counting is at best extremely imprecise, both on
| how we measure the calories in food and how we estimate
| energy expenditure by activities. A little googling should
| lead to numerous discussions. I really enjoy the podcast
| maintenance phase, and even if you don't want to listen to
| the episode they helpfully include tons of links: https://mai
| ntenancephase.buzzsprout.com/1411126/episodes/106...
| tayo42 wrote:
| Oh I guess, I try to go towards overestimating calories
| taken in and underestimate my calories spent.
|
| It does work for me, but being vigilant about it is tedious
| so I'm open to hearing if people have better ways.
| squillion wrote:
| Take a look at these books:
|
| - David Ludwig, _Always Hungry?_
|
| - Mark Hyman, _The Blood Sugar Solution_
|
| The first one is very accessible, the second one very
| posh. But the underlying approach is the same: no calorie
| counting, just good food in the right proportions.
| adrian_b wrote:
| 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 not
| only the double of the amount that I have planned, but
| even the triple amount or more, with a corresponding
| increase in the weight gain.
|
| Perhaps there are people who might stop automatically
| from eating, before ingesting too much, but I am not one
| of them and looking around I have never met one of those
| people.
|
| For myself and for most people that I have seen (with the
| extremely rare exceptions of those people who remain thin
| despite claiming to eat as much as they can, and who may
| actually have impaired food digestion or absorption)
| hoping to stop naturally before overeating does not work.
| The only thing that works is deciding how much to eat
| before starting to eat, then never eating more than that.
| For planning how much to eat, calorie counting works
| fine.
| squillion wrote:
| 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
| that it's much easier to directly control _what_ you eat
| than _how much_ you eat. And by following those diets it
| 's allegedly easier to eat the right amount.
|
| I absolutely believe your method works. As for me, I've
| experienced that since I changed my diet as per the above
| recommendations, I'm not hungry two hours after each meal
| anymore.
|
| tayo42 asked for something less tedious than counting
| calories, so I suggested they take a look at an
| alternative approach which has benefited me, and in my
| opinion is well argued.
| squillion wrote:
| I also read that counting calories is so inaccurate that
| you may die of starvation or become obese, on the same
| diet. That is, if you exclusively ate what you measured,
| and all of it.
|
| Counting calories presumably works (when it does) because
| it's combined with more nutritious, regular meals, better
| awareness, etc. It's also possible that the measurement
| errors even out over time, but I suspect the timescale is
| too long (if you've undereaten for two days you'll end up
| eating something out of the diet).
| adrian_b wrote:
| Counting calories has low accuracy for various reasons,
| e.g. for variances in the percentages of food digestion
| and of nutrient absorption, even in the same individual.
| There are also appearances of low accuracy caused by the
| fact that the body adjusts the energy allocated for
| various internal processes in order to compensate the
| variances in daily energy intake, but this capacity of
| compensation is finite and it can be overridden by
| changing sufficiently the daily energy intake, i.e. the
| calorie count.
|
| Nevertheless, if done correctly you can never die of
| starvation or become obese, because you must not aim for
| a theoretical value, but for the value which you find by
| experiment that it keeps your weight constant.
|
| I have been obese for many years and after many failed
| attempts to lose weight I was believing that kind of BS
| that for some people it may be impossible to control
| their weight.
|
| However, I had always failed because I had always done it
| wrongly. After I had started counting calories properly,
| in less than a year I have lost more than a third of my
| body weight and since then I maintain whatever body
| weight I believe to be the right value.
|
| The difference between "before" and "after" is that I
| have switched from eating when I felt like it and until
| believing to have had enough, to only eating after making
| a plan of what to eat during that day, and in which
| quantities, according to the calories limit, and then
| sticking to the plan made in the morning and never eating
| anything extra, not even a snack or a sweetened beverage.
|
| During the initial time, when losing weight, absolutely
| essential was the use of accurate weighing scales, with
| resolution of 0.1 kg or better, in order to check my
| weight each day at the same hour and reduce the calorie
| limit whenever the weight was not less by 0.1 kg than the
| weight of the previous day (with some smoothing to avoid
| overshooting, especially because it appears that there is
| a delay of several days between reducing the calorie
| limit to a value that forces a continuous weight
| reduction and the start of the actual weight decreasing).
|
| After losing weight, I had to continue counting calories,
| otherwise I would not keep my desired weight. If I do not
| eat according to a plan, according to a calorie limit, I
| gain weight extremely easily, at a rate at least 6 to 10
| times greater than the rate at which I can lose again the
| added weight.
|
| For an example of a calorie limit, I am a male of average
| height and with a sedentary lifestyle, even if I do at
| least a half of hour per day of exercising, including
| weight lifting. In order to keep the weight for a BMI of
| about 25, I have to eat in the range of 1800 to 1900
| kcal/day (which I do in 2 meals per day, each slightly
| above 900 kcal).
|
| There have been a few nutritional studies done in USA and
| linked recently on HN. Like in other similar studies, the
| diets used for the subjects were around 2400 to 2500
| kcal/day. I have no idea about which may be the
| difference between me and the subjects of those studies,
| but if I ate 2400 kcal/day I would become obese in a few
| weeks, gaining weight by up to a couple of pounds per
| day.
|
| The only difference that I am aware of is that my food is
| cooked by myself from high-quality raw ingredients, while
| the subjects of those studies were eating mostly
| industrially-produced food, so my "calories" may be
| "bigger" than their "calories" (i.e. more of the food
| being actually digested and absorbed).
| edanm wrote:
| > Counting calories presumably works (when it does)
| because it's combined with more nutritious, regular
| meals, better awareness, etc.
|
| This is what critics don't get. Calorie counting is what
| makes people have better awareness, and what makes people
| aware of what meal is more nutritious.
|
| When you're in the weeds of this stuff it's hard to
| remember, but many people honestly don't know what are
| caloric equivalents of different foods, and that's pretty
| important information if you're trying to eat better.
| rxtexit wrote:
| It is a beyond stupid argument. What is imprecise is not
| counting calories at all. It is so easy to fool yourself
| and think you are eating 30% less calories than you really
| are. You also can get an idea of your micro nutrient
| breakdown and what you might be lacking.
| XorNot wrote:
| People screw it up by trying to measure energy expenditure
| is the problem I consistently see.
|
| There is never a reason to do this: people do it because
| they want to eat more, so they want to factor exercise in.
|
| They're basically already sabotaging the process from the
| outset: the goal is generally weightloss, they have an easy
| and precise way to track that, and one week of "under
| eating" isn't going to kill anyone.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| People tend to overestimate the amount of calories they can
| burn through increased activity or exercise.
|
| Walking a mile will burn about 100 calories, give or take.
| That's not much. A latte from Starbucks or a "healthy"
| snack such as a granola bar has more.
|
| Good rule of thumb is that you cannot offset a bad diet
| with exercise for weight loss. Diet is by far more
| impactful. Exercise has other benefits though, which I'm
| not intending to dismiss.
| darkwater wrote:
| > What are peoples criticisms of calorie counting?
|
| Probably the same criticism that applies to all "methods to
| do a thing". That people often miss the forest for the trees
| and obsess on the wrong metric (counting calories while still
| ingesting preprocessed industrial food and beverages) instead
| of the right one (losing weight while being healthy at the
| same time).
| const_cast wrote:
| While there is a risk of missing the forest for the trees,
| I also think that most diets fail because they're _too
| perfect_. You don 't need to be perfectly healthy, and you
| don't need to eat 100% whole foods.
|
| When we get into this sort of mindset that we need to be
| attentive of absolutely everything we eat then we develop a
| sort of adversarial relationship with food, and for most
| people that's just not sustainable. The difference between
| a successful diet that works and one that doesn't could be
| diet soda. Sounds stupid, but if you're miserable then your
| diet isn't going to last. Making better decisions is an
| improvement, and is MUCH better than dropping the pursuit
| all together.
|
| There's plenty of people who are very healthy and they eat
| ice cream, drink soda some times, maybe have cheesecake
| occasionally. That's part of life, and for a lot of people
| that's one of the parts of life that makes it worth living.
| Conversely, there's a lot of people who try something like
| Keto and then eventually fail and fall into an even worse
| relationship with food then they had when they started.
| shlant wrote:
| most people do not arrive at the idea that CICO (Calories In
| Calories Out) is useless or incorrect on their own - they
| usually buy into that belief because they follow specific
| diet communities or health influencers that are incentivized
| to tell them that.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Sometimes people get a bit obsessive with it, would be the
| main obvious problem.
| edanm wrote:
| > Personally, after using MyFitnessPal for a couple years,
| switching to ParrotPal made calorie counting way less time-I
| just need to give it a quick text (or voice) description and it
| does a surprisingly good job of estimating.
|
| I haven't used ParrtPal, what makes it easier than using
| MyFitnessPal?
| Sleepthinker wrote:
| As a gym enthusiast, if this app can't give me accurate calorie
| counts and nutrient data, it's basically useless to me. But for
| the average person, this is a big deal because we tend to seek
| convenience and want the easiest path to our goals. If this app
| wants to truly deliver results, it still has a long way to go.
|
| Fun fact: The founder of Cal AI is just 18 years old.
| tjpnz wrote:
| If you want calorie counting to be of any value to you you're
| going to want to be accurate. Thankfully we're mostly creatures
| of habit. Source accurate numbers for everything you eat in a
| week and you're 90% covered for every other week. I recorded 30
| items over two weeks and then added 15 more over 2.5 months.
| Don't sabotage your efforts with tools that don't work.
| tayo42 wrote:
| This is my experience too. Not even 2 weeks, it was like a
| really tedious 3 or 4 days then I pretty much knew what to take
| out.
| smartgamer112 wrote:
| Yeah cal AI is the worst of them all
| senko wrote:
| CalAI is just objectively a bad app even discounting its AI
| calorie estimator as an irrelevant gimmick:
|
| * the UX is bad
|
| * the stats are laughable
|
| * charts worse than nothing (really, misleading to look at)
|
| * lacking basic functionality such as "duplicate for today"
|
| * can't see or export the meal photo
|
| * their "streak" attempt at gamification is so bad it literally
| cannot count
|
| And yes, the AI there is atrociously bad. Not only can it not
| reliably detect calorie content (I don't think anyone could on a
| basis of a photo in general case), but it so often mislabels food
| (like the example in article) it's just a comedic relief. And
| there's a "Fix" button which does nothing.
|
| It's like they never really tried hard. Combined with the general
| lack of quality, looks like a typical quick money grab riding the
| AI hype wave. I'm pretty confident the app could be vibe-coded in
| a week (and that's generous). Maybe the backend is more complex?
| Don't think so as there are no social features, it just stores
| data.
|
| Paid for a year (Android app) to see how well they applied AI to
| the field, now continue to use it like a meal photo log with some
| (manually entered) metadata, otherwise Excel would be a nicer
| solution.
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| We live in a post quality age.
|
| Consumers just don't care.
|
| AI dialed this to the max: The early vibe coding startup
| catches the worm. Working with designers, doing A/B tests, QA,
| product management, nowadays all of this will make you lose to
| the competition.
|
| You just need to get something out that looks as if it works,
| that makes users feel as if it works, whether it really does or
| not, whether the quality is atrocious or good.
| fakedang wrote:
| Exactly. At what seems to be 30 USD a year, that's laughably
| low for most users. I'm actually impressed on the kids for
| finding a niche snake oil market and selling it to them.
| username223 wrote:
| It's not that consumers don't care -- it's that "they" (i.e.
| "we") have been beaten down.
|
| Connect an image labeling API to the USDA's database of
| nutrients, make a slick-looking app, and you have a product.
| Pay for some marketing, offer a three-day trial after which
| you auto-bill for a year, make refunds as difficult as
| possible, and you have a business. At $30/yr, 10k
| subscriptions (deliberate or accidental) gets you $210k after
| app store commission. If you're lucky, you get bought out for
| even more. If not, you still made good money for not much
| work.
| jonplackett wrote:
| 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.
| automatic6131 wrote:
| I bet @onionweigher could - if all you ate were onions
| teddyh wrote:
| Human children can't live on onions.
|
| <https://scarygoround.com/badmachinery/index.html?pg=374#show
| ...>
| jclardy wrote:
| I've used the AI features in Lose It and was pretty impressed,
| not for the caloric estimate, but when given a picture of a
| breakfast burrito it accurately split it out into the component
| parts, from there I could manually adjust amounts easily for
| food I make without having to manually search out every
| ingredient manually. As an additional tool it is great.
|
| The issue of course is these new apps built with a sole focus
| of AI images for tracking. With a photo of restaurant food you
| can't see a sauce and the 5-10g of additional sugar content,
| can't get accurate guesses of what is in breads/pastas and
| figuring out general volumes of foods is not possible unless
| you have some kind of standard size reference in the frame.
| Iulioh wrote:
| Honestly the best use case i have seen is the ability to read
| a labels and add it to the database. (Similar to an OCR but
| better)
|
| Correcting errors in MFP is the bane of my existence.
|
| I have tried some other apps but i hated every single one of
| them for a reason or another and came back to MFP but that
| was one of the best features i would really love to have
| mapt wrote:
| However bad these algorithms are (and we're talking very wide
| intervals in multiple dimensions of uncertainty), you could
| immediately improve the vision/volume calculation part with a
| modest change - like requiring a size reference. "Place a unit
| of currency next to the plate, then take at least two photos of
| the plate from different angles" can get you pretty close to an
| accurate volume.
|
| If they aren't doing even that much, then they're not very
| interested in accuracy at all.
| jonplackett wrote:
| The problem is, if you are serious about losing weight, you
| need to ideally aim for something like a 300 calorie deficit.
| Much more and you'll feel shit, a lot less and it'll be quite
| slow or go the other way. It's quite a fine margin and even
| tracking using bar codes you're not going to be perfect.
|
| But even more important - you really gotta track your macros
| if you want it to work well - and again also not feel crap.
|
| There is no way in hell an AI camera is tracking macros well
| fwip wrote:
| The article says that at least the first app trialed does
| recommend putting a size reference in.
| gavinray wrote:
| 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 abilities like this are useful to you would
| seem heavily dependent on your diet.
| jonplackett wrote:
| So here's why that ain't true.
|
| Yoghurt.
|
| You can buy zero fat Greek yogurt that has very low sugar.
| It's perfect for losing weight. It's about 50kcals per 100g.
| And also super high in protein.
|
| Or you can buy yoghurt that is full of sugar and is 100kcals
| per 100g and has lots of fat and hardly any protein.
|
| Even a human expert could not tell the difference without
| tasting them.
|
| This is just one example of many.
| mapt wrote:
| I wanted to examine this numerically.
|
| * Great Value Original Vanilla Lowfat Yogurt, 32 oz
|
| Serving size 3/4 cup (170g)
|
| 1.5g fat
|
| 26g carbs (21 of which are sugar)
|
| 5g protein
|
| 130 kcal
|
| * Great Value Greek Plain Nonfat Yogurt, 32 oz Tub
|
| Serving size 2/3 cup (170g)
|
| 7g carbs (7 of which are sugar)
|
| 17g protein
|
| 100 kcal
|
| * Great Value Light Vanilla Nonfat Yogurt, 32 oz
|
| Serving size 3/4 cup (170g)
|
| 15g carbs (12 of which are sugar)
|
| 5g protein
|
| 80 kcal
|
| If it's only got 50kcal per 100g, then I assume you've got
| to be relying heavily on indigestible gelling agents to
| keep the texture reading to the customers as yogurt. I
| assume that the developer would suggest that a zero-calorie
| bowl of water and indigestible gelling agents that reads to
| YOU as yogurt, is not accurately summarized as yogurt, and
| that this would be a case of user error.
| jonplackett wrote:
| https://www.sainsburys.co.uk/gol-ui/product/fage-
| total-0-nat...
|
| This is the yoghurt I was talking about. It's a high
| quality brand here in the UK
|
| 54kal per 100g and 10g protein
|
| 3g carbs (zero of which sugar)
|
| Ingredients: Pasteurised Skimmed Milk, Live Active
| Yoghurt Cultures (L. Bulgaricus, S. Thermophilus, L.
| Acidophilus, Bifidus, L. Casei)
| davidcbc wrote:
| And how is it going to tell how much oil or butter was used
| in a dish?
| james_marks wrote:
| What's interesting to me is a tool can be terrible at its
| stated problem and still add value.
|
| I suspect many of the results dieters get is "mere
| measurement", e.g. it helps them be more thoughtful, seek
| education, etc.
|
| So the value of the tool is in its ability to keep them engaged
| and hopeful (the unstated need), and the actual mechanic
| doesn't have to be that good at the stated need.
| davidcbc wrote:
| It can also be a negative value.
|
| If I diligently track calories using one of these things and
| don't lose weight I'll say "screw it" and stop bothering
| because obviously counting calories doesn't work. I think
| this is much more likely to be the case because even proper
| calorie counting is difficult and frustrating
| jonplackett wrote:
| It's the 'What gets measured gets managed' truism - but does
| it hold true is your measurement is BS?
| james_marks wrote:
| It's slightly different- the act of responding itself
| changes behavior, regardless of any outcome:
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12064450/#:~:text=
| T...
| flippyhead wrote:
| There is a study somewhere that said people who wanted to lose
| weight and simply tracked their calories (without any attempt
| at reducing them) LOST weight vs those who did nothing.
| Awareness alone is valuable.
|
| Maybe this one: https://today.duke.edu/2019/02/tracking-food-
| leads-losing-po...
| Too wrote:
| Yeah. It doesn't take much imagination to figure out that a
| Coke Zero looks identical to regular Coca Cola, yet they have
| vastly different calorie content, to put it mildly.
|
| Sauces loaded with butter, sugar or other goodies will of
| course be the same story.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I used MyFitnessPal to lose 15kg a few years ago and I have a
| theory that the act of calorie counting (ie the effort of working
| it out and labour of putting it into the app) is a key part of
| why it works. It becomes just slightly more effort to eat
| something and it makes you stop and think. Making it easier I
| would expect to make it also easier to eat more.
| kamma4434 wrote:
| Attention and focus make it work. You must be 'in it' -
| otherwise it wont work.
| myhf wrote:
| Of course it will work. Just tell ChatGPT that it is working
| and it will agree with you.
| jclardy wrote:
| I find a similar thing with budgeting apps. Manually tracking
| requires effort and for you to think twice before every
| purchase, whereas automatic transaction syncing with your bank
| means you can just not think about it.
|
| In the case of dieting/calorie counting - I don't think you can
| get away with not thinking about it, especially with inaccurate
| estimates.
| yoz-y wrote:
| Yep. Iirc any kind of diet works as long as it is restrictive.
| Even if the restriction is "do not eat anything that has blue
| on the package".
| devmor wrote:
| As someone who lost nearly 100lbs (about 45kg) calorie counting
| and working out, this was a big part of it.
|
| It also just made me cognizant of my bad eating habits. I'd
| absent-mindedly snack on something, go to log it, then think
| "wait, why am I eating this right now?" and stop.
|
| It's essential educating yourself on nutrition through habit.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Great achievement well done! Out of curiosity, did you track
| macros too and what calorie deficit did you aim for, and how
| long did it take?
| devmor wrote:
| Yes, macros were key as I was doing a pretty intensive
| 4-day HIIT program at the time.
|
| I actually aimed strictly for my maintenance calories as I
| was burning 700-900cal in exercise per workout day. Was
| very hard work, but rewarding.
|
| It took about a year to drop that much weight, normally I
| think it would take longer but I had a very dedicated group
| trainer helping me stay on track.
| jonplackett wrote:
| That's cool that it worked with your maintenance
| calories. was that calculated a maintenance for sedentary
| lifestyle and the exercise was on top, or did you also
| eat the exercise calories and still lost weight?
| devmor wrote:
| The former - the ultimate goal was to get myself
| comfortable with eating in a way that would keep me at a
| stable weight and stick with it. I knew this was going to
| be the hardest part of the lifestyle change, so I opted
| for a more difficult up front program to ensure I could
| focus on that while I lost weight.
|
| I think that's something that a lot of people fail to
| account for when trying to lose weight that ultimately
| ruins their goals - you have to build habits to sustain
| the lifestyle you want. Weight loss surgery, eating at a
| large deficit or working out hard alone are going to get
| rid of some weight, but most people will gain all of that
| back within a year's time.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Totally agree - and if you track it and do the macros
| right it doesn't have to be this horrendous experience.
| Often you feel better!
| devmor wrote:
| Yep, that's one thing I noticed pretty quickly. I had
| more energy and slept better when I ate a good macro
| balance and worked out.
| jxjnskkzxxhx wrote:
| Yes!! I used an app called Waistline 2 years ago to keep myself
| on a brutal diet. I did < 1500 calories per day for 2 months.
| Lost 9kg. Came out with the same insight: the hassle of
| meticulously keeping track helps with the restraint.
| ginko wrote:
| >The app did recognize it as an apple this time, but estimated it
| at 80 calories when the actual count should have been closer to
| 120.
|
| Where does the author take the 120 number from? The very link
| they gave says a large pink lady apple is 78 calories.
| hyperbovine wrote:
| Presumably every apple has a different calorie count depending
| on ripeness, size, and variety...?
| llm_nerd wrote:
| They do claim their apple is 222 grams, so presumably they took
| the 100g nutrition and multiplied it by 2.2.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| Others have found that CalAI likely uses Gemini 1.5 (not sure
| which variant) which is used because it's very cheap, not for its
| accuracy.
|
| I understand the fundamental issues with calorie counting via
| photo analysis/LLM. However these articles would be more
| interesting if they included comparison with results from actual
| cutting-edge LLMs, rather than the budget models. I acknowledge
| that apps don't use these models though to protect margins and
| lower cost.
|
| Also:
|
| > Cameras capture two-dimensional images of three-dimensional
| objects.
|
| iPhone camera captures depth, too. I don't think it's being used
| in CalAI though. This article is more about current
| commercialized solutions rather than analysis of state of the art
| capability.
| tough wrote:
| what's worse, this could be 100% done in local llms since its
| such a small batchable job
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| What model can run on a phone with accuracy closer to 4o than
| Gemini 1.5?
| tough wrote:
| idk tbh asking an llm to estimate calories seems like such
| a -bad idea- on the first place, that doesnt seem that
| having a better model would improve results much.
| woadwarrior01 wrote:
| > 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.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| 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)
| p1dda wrote:
| I welcome every article that exposes just how bad "AI" is.
| blibble wrote:
| it still also can't count the legs on a dog
|
| https://vlmsarebiased.github.io/
|
| another decade and we'll be able to get the Not Hotdog app from
| Silicon Valley
| perching_aix wrote:
| How many times a day and how many unique food items does one need
| to eat to continually remain so hopelessly unfamiliar with their
| caloric intake that they need an _app_ to track it?
|
| What role can AI possibly have in this, when all you need to do
| is either turn around the packaging or do a web search for the
| dish you cook to get a number?
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| Restaurants and dishes at home made by someone else that have a
| combination of different foods.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| > they need an app to track it?
|
| "track" is important here
|
| How packaging or a web search will help with exactly
| remembering how much was eaten in past?
| perching_aix wrote:
| By enabling you to think in terms of what you ate, rather
| than numbers. If you eat a varied but regular diet, this
| enables you to stop having to track. You'll just know your
| approximate caloric budget and intake for the day, and what
| that means in terms of food items.
|
| When you have to take ownership of your diet (and thus your
| weight), that means a permanent lifestyle change. Tracking is
| simply not sustainable indefinitely, so you must establish
| better consumption habits while you do so, that will stick
| past the tracking. Tracking and getting to know _what you
| eat_ , rather than tracking your calories, is what enables
| you to form such a habit and knowledge base.
|
| Eating random stuff and thus having to use AI due to a lack
| of easily accessible and personally learnable nutrition
| information makes a total mockery of this process, and runs
| pretty much antithetical to it.
| ulfw wrote:
| This goes for most "AI" things nowadays. What was once
| "blockchain" has become "AI" for companies now.
|
| (PS: doesn't mean there aren't real use cases. Sadly the term AI
| has been stretched to cover all kinds of charlatanery)
| bandrami wrote:
| AI aside we don't _really_ know how many calories a given person
| will get from eating a given piece of food. We measure food 's
| calories by burning it, but we don't get nearly all that energy
| from dissolving it (just consider the fact that solid human waste
| burns, for instance). At best we've established some (fairly
| broad) minima and maxima.
| bitdivision wrote:
| Presumably the recommended daily calorie intake figures (and
| the calculators for these) do to some extent take this into
| account? i.e. I would imagine they're based on experimentally
| tested values rather than theoretical energy expenditure.
| matkoniecz wrote:
| "We measure food's calories by burning it" - are you sure that
| how it is done?
|
| Humans (unlike say cows) do not digest parts of what is
| available in plants, which makes some vegetables filling and
| ultra-low caloric.
|
| "we don't really know how many calories a given person will get
| from eating a given piece of food"
|
| exact numbers of unknown, but difference is not so great,
| except truly extreme cases (and vast majority of fat people is
| not fat due to them)
| neither_color wrote:
| add to that food calorie labels arent required to be 100%
| accurate, there's an acceptable range like +/- 20% iirc. That's
| enough to throw off a precise deficit. Calorie counting is more
| about directionally helping you lower your food consumption but
| it isnt as accurate as people think.
| zeta0134 wrote:
| 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 exercise isn't it? There's a lot of
| individual variation, and the individual is probably best
| served by a personalized approach.
| devmor wrote:
| 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?
| zeta0134 wrote:
| If I'm smart, I can offset this by eating half of that
| meal in the restaurant and taking the rest in a to-go
| container. Two meals for the price of one, and reheating
| in the oven is almost as convenient.
|
| Separately though, I have no idea why restaurants seem to
| exclusively offer gigantic portions over here. I wonder
| how common this is elsewhere in the world? I'm not well
| traveled so I genuinely have no idea.
| ap99 wrote:
| We might know the inner workings of the "machine" but we can
| control inputs (food) and measure outputs (weight).
|
| Let's say I eat 3 hamburgers per day and gain ~1kg per month.
|
| If I reduce that to 2 hamburgers per day I maintain my weight.
|
| And when I reduce that to 1 hamburger per day I lose ~1kg per
| month.
|
| That is simple. As for how I feel while eating 1 hamburger
| that's another question.
|
| I can try to improve the machinery of my body by e.g
| exercising, eating healthier food, adjusting my macros, taking
| supplements, etc.
|
| So now I can eat 1.5 hamburgers per day and I feel better and
| still lose 1kg per month.
| mapt wrote:
| We don't get it from raw bomb calorimetry ("Burn it and measure
| how hot it gets"). There are additional absorption coefficients
| applied before the nutrition label is printed. But for
| proteins, fats, and simple carbohydrates the coefficients are
| quite high (~95%), while progressively more complex carbs have
| a declining curve that ends in indigestible fiber. The
| difficulty is that the same person will digest more or less of
| the protein in their hamburger depending on how many fries they
| ate, how greasy those fries were, whether they ate lunch, and
| how much beer they drank that night. It's variable.
| reedf1 wrote:
| While this is strictly true - measurement of calories gives the
| upper bound of possible energy absorption. This makes it
| sufficient to calculate if TotalCaloriesIn >= TotalCaloriesOut.
| Obviously there are some biological complexities - but within
| the boundaries of the system the outcomes are constrained by
| the laws of thermodynamics.
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| it's crazy how much money you can make with a garbage app. The
| fact that i'm not means i must be stupid
| snakeboy wrote:
| This feels like the same type of critique people have about code-
| assistant LLMs. We need to be a lot more realistic about their
| role as a 'next-gen autocomplete' who can write some boilerplate
| code, not a replacement for a mid-level software developer.
|
| These apps seem useful to reduce the friction of entering your
| meal's calorie contents from 30 seconds of ingredient estimating,
| to 20 seconds (auto-filling main ingredients and a baseline
| portion estimate). As everyone points out, it's impossible for
| these to get any better than that (GIGO). But reducing the
| overhead for calorie-counting seems like a reasonable goal and a
| valuable service. Of course the marketing departments for these
| companies is going to say whatever bullshit they want; that's
| their prerogative...
| mkfs wrote:
| Fat is the most calorie-dense macro at 9 per gram (protein and
| carb are both 4), so your accuracy is going to be heavily skewed
| by how accurately you can identify the fat content of the meal.
| The problem is that it's often in forms like oils that don't seem
| well-suited to AI image recognition.
| dack wrote:
| Calorie tracking is also about educating yourself about how many
| calories certain things are, so you can make better decisions.
|
| Like, oil is insanely caloric and can accidentally add hundreds
| of calories, but it's nearly impossible to eat too many greens.
|
| Once you learn this, then the tracking is just to keep you honest
| - your brain knows what to do but it lies to you when it wants to
| bend the rules and those little cheats add up enough to throw off
| the whole diet.
| cainxinth wrote:
| 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
| yreg wrote:
| > 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 shots when going out in the evening.
|
| Obviously staying sober is the healthier option.
| n4r9 wrote:
| I definitely find it suprising that a shot of gin has as
| many calories as an apple.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| I think when people are mentioning alcohol they typically
| mean beer or wine - a can of beer is ~150 calories, so have
| a few of those a night, which isn't at all uncommon in some
| households, and over a week you're up ~1 lbs.
| hedora wrote:
| Also, 150 calories is somewhere between cheap American
| beer and a nice IPA or stout. You can easily hit 200-300
| calories per beer.
| spelunker wrote:
| New Belgium "Juice Force IPA", I'm looking at you!
| washmyelbows wrote:
| my favorite stout is 400 calories for 12oz
| malfist wrote:
| Sure six shots are 550 calories. But who drinks six shots
| of gin?
|
| You need to also include all the mixers as well and they're
| usually all sugar
| yreg wrote:
| > But who drinks six shots of gin?
|
| Haha, I'm from almost-eastern-europe, so pretty much all
| drinkers I know. (Actually "Borovicka" is the most
| popular. It is not gin, but somewhat similar to gin.)
|
| But I mean, when someone is trying to reduce calorie
| intake, they don't consume whatever they want to. They
| need to make some concessions. So instead of a fancy
| cocktail or a bottle of wine, you can drink some vodka
| (provided getting intoxicated is the goal).
| foobarian wrote:
| Heh, Borovicka is the most amazing thing ever. I need to
| find a source stateside :-)
| gadders wrote:
| For a G&T, you can get slimline tonic which tastes quite
| good.
| reedf1 wrote:
| 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.
| gadders wrote:
| In your early 20s your metabolism is that much higher as
| well that it can cope.
| mock-possum wrote:
| Sure, that means that 6 shots of gin basically replaces one
| whole meal.
| kelipso wrote:
| If 550kcal is one whole meal to you, then 6 shots of gin
| will get you absolutely blasted, probably black out too.
| taeric wrote:
| Oddly, I think how you track can matter here. If you do it as
| a lookup of "I am eating this, and it says it was this many
| calories" then you are not likely to remember and develop a
| sense of how many calories things have. However, if you do it
| as "I am eating this, I think it has X calories, but looking
| it up I found it was Y" that can help remember.
|
| I can try to find the studies, but basically, "guess and
| check" is ridiculously powerful in learning. Is part of what
| makes flash cards so strong. Just "ask and answer", not so
| much.
| hammock wrote:
| Extra light beer or shot 100
|
| Light beer or wine 150
|
| Regular beer 200
|
| mixed drink 300
|
| Trashy mixed drink 400
| coltoneakins wrote:
| 100% agree it is about re-educating yourself about calories in
| food. I wasn't happy with my weight but it was never 'obese': I
| am 5' 8" and weighed 187 lbs.
|
| Back in November I started tracking calories in the app
| Cronometer. I lost 35+ lbs down to 151 lbs as of this morning.
|
| Even as a 'relatively healthy' dude, I realized just how bad my
| perception of calories and macros in food was. So, I totally
| agree with this.
| XorNot wrote:
| This was my story too - calorie tracking made me reevaluate
| my whole diet. Suddenly when I couldn't "just have more" I
| was getting much more interested in the value of what I was
| having and the quality improved a lot.
| jonplackett wrote:
| 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.
| skohan wrote:
| I had the same experience. For me peanut butter and apples
| were my "healthy snack" and were accounting for a huge amount
| of calories per week.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I found I developed a new value of food based on its
| deliciousness per kcal.
|
| Some foods are delicious but too calorific to be
| considered.
|
| Some taste OK but turn out to be exceptional value!
| sethhochberg wrote:
| "Healthy" is a pretty loaded word. In the grand scheme of
| things apples and peanut butter is indeed a pretty healthy
| snack: good balance of fiber and protein and carbs and
| healthy fats, and nothing particularly bad like partially
| hydrogenated oils if you stick to a decent brand of peanut
| butter. But its not a particularly low-anything snack, so
| maybe not an efficient use of calories for someone trying
| to watch their weight. Nuts in general are a pretty caloric
| food.
|
| Occasionally (usually as a distraction while trying to make
| a meal plan for the week) I find myself wondering by what
| we could do differently with the concept of healthy foods
| that makes nuances like this easier for people to
| understand, without getting into fad diet territory. I've
| never had a brilliant idea here because its fundamentally
| asking the public to have a nuanced understanding in an
| industry with tons of historical marketing spin, which
| is... hard. Really hard. Fad diets and diet plans in
| general exist because someone telling you exactly what to
| eat is sometimes more effective than trying to give an
| understanding about why those choices are made.
|
| The reality is that "healthy" is an individualized goal and
| different foods are a tool for getting to that destination.
| const_cast wrote:
| 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.
| rurp wrote:
| I actually saw a large observational study recently with
| the surprising result that people who began eating more ice
| cream actually lost weight. It's not that ice cream is good
| for you (obviously), but that people often use it to
| replace foods that are even worse.
| testing22321 wrote:
| This was the huge benefit of weight watchers. I saw hundreds of
| people utterly shocked they could eat a literal mountain of
| salad for the same number of "points" (calories/50) as a tiny
| piece of something sweet or fatty.
|
| They genuinely had no idea, and it changed their lives.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| I did Weight Watchers once when I was young. It didn't stick at
| the time, but it did give me a great deal of perspective that
| lead to healthy eating and exercise habits that did stick. I
| worked at Barnes & Noble then, and coming in and realizing that
| a grande frappuccino wasn't just 'unhealthy' it was all the
| points. I started reading labels.
|
| Ultimately what worked is what you say, "educating...better
| decisions" Every diet I tried I concluded the secret sauce was
| just doing what I already knew - stop eating so much crap and
| move around more. It was hard yet liberating to get to a point
| where I wasn't on a diet I was just consciously choosing salads
| over fries, passing on desert, and not buying junk food so I
| just don't have it when the compulsion hits. (ADHD meds helped
| with compulsions, so it wasn't all iron will)
|
| It was like getting sober in a way. I knew, but I also had to
| want to stop.
| rurp wrote:
| Yes exactly, all that's needed in practice is to learn a
| handful of simple heuristics and you'll be fine _if_ you follow
| them. Unfortunately simple does not equate to easy, losing
| weight is quite hard for most people but the hard part is not
| knowing what to do, it 's actually doing it.
|
| I think that nearly all of the consumer weight loss industry,
| of which these silly AI photo apps are a small part, is an
| attempt to turn a simple but hard process into one that's
| complicated but easy. In practice such shortcuts generally
| don't work which is why products like these have miserably low
| success rates.
| trod1234 wrote:
| In many respects calorie counting is an exercise in
| misinformation induced stupidity, from bad science.
|
| What people fail to realize is the calories on the label aren't
| the calories they are actually getting. Those on the label are
| the calories for the substance found by burning it in a lab.
| Calories absorbed are quite different, and depend on the method
| of preparation and personal factors. Different methods release
| different percentage amounts to be taken up by your body in
| digestion.
|
| Additionally, the standard saying "Calories in Calories Out"
| only applies when you are healthy, and have no weight or
| medical issues. The moment you have any kind of metabolism-
| mediated or norepinphrine-mediated reactions (i.e. allergies,
| chemical exposures [pfas], etc), that paradigm fails.
|
| If you are getting ravenously hungry or nauseous , you are
| starving yourself, and this can damage your metabolism, and it
| won't result in long-term weight loss. You lose metabolically
| active tissue over fat which adapts to lower BMRs.
|
| When you are eating healthy at the proper times, you aren't
| getting ravenously hungry.
|
| Anyone who has done Atkin's knows that after they transition
| into ketosis, they don't get hungry. They eat very high caloric
| foods, but they eat much less, and the carbohydrates, or
| excessive protein, and usually so low that the extra fat they
| eat doesn't get stored as fat. Not everyone can do that though
| because of issues with kidney, liver, or gallbladder, but the
| ones that can lose amazing amounts of weight effortlessly. The
| diet itself is also anti-inflammatory, and cholesterol isn't an
| issue.
|
| This is going to shock people.
|
| I've weighed my food out to get that daily calorie count.
| Here's a mindblower. I can eat 2700 calories of fats, and
| protein in a 60 30 ratio keeping carbs at 20g for the day, and
| I will on average lose 1-2 pounds a day, and this is done after
| the transition where water weight drop off has already
| plateaued (the weight loss isn't water weight, and its mostly
| not muscle mass either).
|
| Each pound is 3500 calories. My BMR is supposed to be 2200 for
| my weight and height/body composition. How am I in what amounts
| to an effective 9700 calorie deficit with no exercise, and no
| hunger?
|
| I've done this alongside college friends too. They see almost
| the exact same results. They found it a little annoying because
| they had to get checked out by a doctor first for those issues,
| and had to drink a lot more water, eat more fiber, and ensure
| they got the essential vitamins. Aside from that, the fat just
| falls off.
|
| Calories in vs. Calories out is a lie.
| rurban wrote:
| A classic tale of a founder winning over engineering. "This stock
| model from huggingface is good enough, no need to train it."
| tomp wrote:
| The best summary of the situation I found on Twitter:
|
| _The most important part of marketing and PR is lying to your
| customers._
| tantalor wrote:
| Not hotdog
| blitzar wrote:
| Hotdog
| ksajh wrote:
| Sandwich
| blitzar wrote:
| Not hotdog
| vjulian wrote:
| 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 so I can see how I'm
| tracking. It's so easy--I don't even type, I use (the overall
| excellent) ChatGPT's TTS function in the iOS app.
|
| If I eat something unexpected, I have it recalculate what I need
| for the rest of the day. If I were planning on 8 ounces of
| chicken for dinner but had an unplanned snack, it might tell me
| that 6 ounces will suffice now, and I now have room for more fat,
| so I could add some cheese. I find it quite accurate in this.
|
| Where it loses accuracy is over time. Even when focused on just a
| single day, the cumulative totals can be wrong when the context
| window gets too large. I catch this by mentally adding up the
| numbers it spits out. If the numbers seem off, I open a new chat.
| Also, it's not reliable for looking back over multiple days or
| trying to track long-term patterns.
|
| When I take a photo of a meal (like when eating out), it performs
| very well. I ask it to list the contents of the plate, then I
| correct any assumptions. Once corrected, the resulting macros are
| usually within 5% accuracy. I also tell it the quality of the
| ingredients and restaurant overall, which can help a bit.
| cj wrote:
| Do you find this easier than scanning barcodes with traditional
| calorie tracking apps?
| jmacd wrote:
| How much of your daily intake comes from food that has a
| barcode on it?
| ukFxqnLa2sBSBf6 wrote:
| I typically just measure ingredients and log it in
| Cronometer.
| cj wrote:
| Nearly all food in the US has barcodes.
|
| Produce, meat, etc might not always, but simply search
| those the same as you'd ask ChatGPt.
| Iulioh wrote:
| Personally everything that is not produce
|
| Even the meat, i usually buy packaged
| netdevphoenix wrote:
| I assume a lot of fruit, fish and meat people buy has no
| barcode unless you only buy stuff at a supermarket
| jurgenkesker wrote:
| Did you verify it sometimes how accurate it is? I would be wary
| of it to be honest.
| lysecret wrote:
| I'm doing the exact same thing. I have built a small app for it
| too but I like using the plain ai too.
| echelon wrote:
| I really don't get the bearish on AI folks.
|
| One company has a tool that can replace what we professionally
| do.
|
| This app would have taken person months to build, yet here it
| is, almost as an afterthought.
|
| The next ten years are going to be wild. Hope everyone has a
| plan for leveling up and riding this tsunami.
|
| Even if LLMs presently can't do intricate things, that doesn't
| matter. I know in my gut that my generous total comp job isn't
| going to be available in the future in its current form. In
| aggregate, the work we do isn't going to be as hard or as in
| demand as LLMs devour more of the market share and growth of
| the human economic field and attention economy.
|
| The LLMs are likely going to increase demand for software, but
| in doing so they'll eat more of the market share.
|
| ZIRP, Section 174, industry-wide layoffs, offshoring, and now
| this. Plan accordingly. I'm sure there are gradients with
| tremendous success to be had, but for many there will be a
| decrease in fitness.
| hooverd wrote:
| It's that extra 20%. Everybody right now can do the hardware
| store and rewire their house for cheaper than an electrician,
| yet they'll still hire one to do it. That or maybe everyone
| will just except things being slightly more convenient but
| worse.
| echelon wrote:
| > That or maybe everyone will just except things being
| slightly more convenient but worse.
|
| This is how it will play out.
|
| You'll see it in the cost centers. You'll see it in the "I
| have an idea for an app" pitches. Business people will make
| these decisions, and consumers will too.
|
| { High convenience, High quality, Low cost } - pick two.
|
| Software engineering won't evaporate, but there's something
| new competing with it.
| jaynetics wrote:
| Yeah. I think the analogy with electrical wiring is quite
| illuminating. Few software errors have a similar risk
| profile as faulty wiring. Maybe if a calendar or
| messenger or such is buggy, that's enough of a nuisance
| to switch, but I doubt a lot of software is this
| critical. People already put up with plenty of bugs e.g.
| in games or social networks. Even with paid software, I'm
| sometimes surprised how much patience customers have
| developed when it comes to glaring deficits.
| hooverd wrote:
| I'd be pissed if my washer or dryer or furnace had the
| same defect rate as any of the software I used. Software
| "engineering" has an amazing tolerance for oopsies.
| kelstar18 wrote:
| Is it ironic that my AI detector is ringing alarm bells at this
| comment (both its overall cadence, as well as it's particularly
| unnecessary use of an em dash)?
| MangoToupe wrote:
| Is the em-dash ever "necessary"? It was beloved by nerds on
| the internet long before there was any whisper of LLMs on the
| internet. What do you think chatbots are imitating if not
| humans who also use it?
| Iulioh wrote:
| I never saw a human use it in something different from
| literature. That's where I think the chatbots got it.
| subarctic wrote:
| I use it sometimes, although I'll probably stop now that
| I keep hearing it's too associated with ai. It's easy to
| enter though on Mac it's just option shift hyphen
| vjulian wrote:
| I write for a living and read literature at university. I
| find it odd that you've never encountered an em dash in
| common writing.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > 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?
| XorNot wrote:
| It was only ever inserted by word processors for me.
|
| No one typing with a regular keyboard would ever bother,
| certainly not with the HN input box.
| BryantD wrote:
| I think there are cases of people using keystroke
| expanders to automate the -- to em-dash conversation
| outside word processors. Not so common among technical
| folks, though, for postfix operator reasons.
|
| The comment we're talking about doesn't read like AI to
| me because of the use of parenthetical asides, although
| that just means I haven't seen a LLM that tends to use
| parentheses heavily.
| MangoToupe wrote:
| > It was only ever inserted by word processors for me.
|
| Surely you still intended to type an em-dash if this
| happened--word on windows (as I presume you intend to
| refer to with 'word processors') only replaces '--' with
| '--'.
|
| >No one typing with a regular keyboard would ever bother,
| certainly not with the HN input box.
|
| You press 'option', 'shift', and '-' (on a mac with the
| default US english layout, anyway). Why would you assume
| nobody would use a basic element of writing (in English,
| at least)? It's just a long-press on the iphone.
| Iulioh wrote:
| Some non-English speakers sometimes throw whatever they wrote
| in English into a chatbot to correct the text, just in case.
| hn8726 wrote:
| why are people insisting that an em-dash is exclusive to llms
| somehow, when on a mac it's super easy to type dash, en-dash
| and em-dash -- just type dash, option + dash or shift +
| option + dash. I got used to defaulting to em-dash (even if
| incorrectly) and now I'll be categorized as an llm for that?
| kelstar18 wrote:
| Yes, is the simple answer to your question.
| vjulian wrote:
| Not AI-written. Personally, I love em dashes and semicolons.
| beepbooptheory wrote:
| With stuff like this, I am always curious: ok, you send it a
| picture of a plate, how does it know the food was cooked in
| butter instead olive oil? Or either way, with 2 tbsp of fat
| instead of 1?
| Iulioh wrote:
| Oh no, it is TERRIBLY wrong
|
| Using VTT is better but still not perfet
|
| The only certain way to do it is measure everything with a
| scale
| pacerwpg wrote:
| Cool, it can replace myfitnesspal features from 10 years ago,
| but do them worse.
|
| Revolutionary.
| vjulian wrote:
| No, I find that app cumbersome.
|
| To respond to others' comments, I tend to eat whole foods. I
| don't eat TV dinner or shop at Costco or such places.
| kelstar18 wrote:
| What does shopping at Costco have to do with anything? They
| sell lots of "whole foods". Tons (literally) of fresh raw
| protein, veg, grains, etc.
| vjulian wrote:
| I associate it with pre-packaged food. My mistake. I've
| only been there once.
| vjulian wrote:
| Also, do you mind dropping the sarcasm and explaining why you
| believe MyFitnessPal might be superior to ChatGPT in the
| usage I'm suggesting?
| pacerwpg wrote:
| You're offloading understanding what you're eating to a
| sentence generating algorithm. You might as well just eat
| Soylent if you're going to use an LLM for nutrition
| tracking.
| vjulian wrote:
| Please desist from counterproductive discussion.
| maxehmookau wrote:
| I can't see any way in which AI could ever solve this from a
| photo.
|
| A tablespoon of oil is 100 calories, but probably not visible in
| an image. Sugar in cooked meals is impossible to see.
|
| Is this aimed at a world where every food product is individually
| wrapped? Because most of the world doesn't live that way.
| rTX5CMRXIfFG wrote:
| Calorie counting is a tedious, impractical activity for anybody
| who isn't even entering a bodybuilding competition. Just go on a
| total deficit with high-quality foods, whatever the composition.
| fastball wrote:
| How do you know you are on a total deficit if you don't count
| calories?
| dsr_ wrote:
| Surprisingly, at no point does the author write:
|
| "This is clearly fraudulent as it does not and cannot work, so I
| reported it to Apple/Google."
| danesparza wrote:
| I think it's very telling that the images were not oriented
| correctly. I'm wondering if this is a simpler bug than the the
| author is letting on.
| hippari2 wrote:
| Would be fun if someone try this on something from East Asian
| cuisine vs Fish and Chips. See how well it does in complex
| dishes.
| weird_trousers wrote:
| It would be "eventually good" if, and only if, Vision problems
| were solved at 100% F1-Score. Which is absolutely not! So, to me,
| I expected bad and I received... bad results.
|
| Paying for this crap is just throwing money out the window. Those
| startups should solve problems and them let people pay for it,
| for 99% accuracy, not at minimum of 66%.
| Qem wrote:
| I wonder what are the errors bars for calorie counting, even
| assuming one measures food intake by weight accurately. Are the
| reference values in food package labelling any good, or is the
| variability from one batch to another and variability in
| absorption from one person to another so large that such
| calculations become an exercise of garbage-in, garbage-out?
| XorNot wrote:
| It doesn't matter provided it's not systemic. For anything
| related to diet, average over time is the much more relevant
| factor.
|
| For example you could track calories by just tallying your
| grocery bills if you lived alone.
| xutopia wrote:
| I just ask ChatGPT based on the weight of the food I eat and it
| gives me pretty accurate results.
| wnorris510 wrote:
| 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 people trying to visually estimate portion size,
| but the truth is both are quite inaccurate.
|
| Most people won't spend the time to track, so photo logging is a
| faster and easier approximation. If you want more accurate
| logging you should use the voice logging feature and a kitchen
| scale (also completely free in our app).
|
| As many mention the goal is to learn, not to tediously track
| every little thing. Do what's sustainable for you and helps
| achieve your health and fitness goals.
| davidcbc wrote:
| What about when people give up because you massively
| underestimate their calories? Or when people develop eating
| disorders because you massively overestimate their calories?
|
| If the goal is to learn then accurate information is important,
| although I suppose it's harder to get a VC to fund.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| What about the people that would have given up on the diet
| without even trying because they just cba to do it
| "properly"?
|
| Ultimately, there is no silver bullet in nutrition.
| davidcbc wrote:
| There may not be a silver bullet but adding randomly
| generated numbers is not an improvement
| wnorris510 wrote:
| We do a lot of research on preventing eating disorders. As
| the article mentions we did not suggest she lose weight down
| to being underweight like other apps did.
|
| Our app has the fruit and veg counters ABOVE the calorie
| meter on the dashboard. The reason for this is that
| maximization mindset (e.g. maximizing fruits and veg) is way
| healthier than a minimization mindset (e.g. minimizing
| calories or carbs).
|
| We actually even tried to fully remove calories from the app
| at some point but we had a vast majority of users churn and
| decided it would be healthier for people who want calorie
| tracking to stick with our app by having it present, but
| requiring them to scroll past the features that promote a
| healthier mindset to get there. Feedback from users has been
| amazing that they've slowly started focusing more on fruits
| and veg.
| davidcbc wrote:
| You are still selling a product that says it can count
| calories when fundamentally it cannot. The fact that people
| believe you and pay you money for it doesn't change that
| fact. You are lying to people.
|
| > SnapCalorie is the first app where you can take a picture
| of any meal and get an accurate calorie count and nutrition
| in seconds
|
| This is from your website. It is pure fiction. You admit as
| much in your first post
| gadders wrote:
| The calorie counts on food packets themselves are +/- 20%, so
| it's inaccurate all the way down.
|
| Some of the value also just comes from writing down what you
| eat, and noting the snacks, dressings, glasses of wine etc
| that you forget about but all add up.
| davidcbc wrote:
| +/- 20% is way better than being off by 3x like in the
| example in this article
| jablongo wrote:
| Do you use the LiDAR Scanner on the iPhone for your
| predictions?
| wnorris510 wrote:
| We do! You can read about our original approach back at
| Google AI in our CVPR publication here:
|
| https://openaccess.thecvf.com/content/CVPR2021/papers/Thames.
| ..
|
| We've since come up with a much more accurate approach. That
| said we also try to do some advanced technique to figure out
| what people were trying to log and not what the amount of
| food in the photo was. So for example if take a bite out of a
| bagel, we'll try to say 1 bagel since it's unlikely you
| wanted to log a bagel less a bite.
| haliskerbas wrote:
| How do you deal with sauces / toppings that can be widely
| variable in macronutrients?
| JohnMakin wrote:
| This is the classic refrain product owners counter back with
| any time people present reasonable criticism of their AI app.
|
| User: "This (AI product) doesn't work!"
|
| Product Owner: "Well, humans are also bad at that."
|
| That's _not_ the promise of these apps in general! The whole
| selling point of AI is that they 're _vastly_ better - if my
| eyeball estimate is "pretty inaccurate" and by your own
| admission the app is "pretty inaccurate" then _why the hell
| would I use your app?_?
|
| From the very top of the page you linked:
|
| > SnapCalorie is the first app where you can take a picture of
| any meal and get an _accurate_ calorie count and nutrition in
| seconds
|
| (emphasis mine)
| kevlened wrote:
| > The whole selling point of AI is that they're vastly better
|
| Not to nitpick, but "better" isn't on a single axis. Taking a
| photo is a better experience than searching and keying in
| every component, even if the accuracy is identical.
|
| AI tools don't even have to be "vastly" better. They could
| be, and often are, even worse on several axes, because they
| often trade quality for ease-of-use.
|
| You may assign a lower weight to the ease-of-use axis (as
| engineers, we tend to), but then you're likely not the ideal
| customer for many of today's AI products.
| ericmcer wrote:
| Thanks for mentioning voice, I prefer that to photos. Photos
| seems like the most complex technically.
|
| AI seems to be going heavy into text/chat and images but voice
| is really the perfect UI to me. I would be totally fine if I
| could trigger a "call" from the app and talk to an AI on the
| phone for 30s and it could log my meal, give me some advice,
| etc.
| yqiang wrote:
| I'm working on an app in this area [1], and I've spent a lot of
| time exploring how to responsibly use AI for food tracking.
|
| My conclusion is that while AI is excellent for augmenting your
| tracking experience, it's not yet reliable enough to be the
| primary tracking method. Consistency is key to successful food
| tracking, and AI can certainly help users avoid the common issue
| of missing a meal and losing momentum. However, inaccuracies,
| like consistently being off by 100-200 calories per day, can
| significantly impact results, especially for those on lower-
| calorie diets (like 1,200-1,500 calories/day, which is common for
| many women due to their physical size).
|
| With FitBee I landed on communicating to the user that these are
| estimates and you probably shouldn't use it as your primary
| method of tracking calories.
|
| [1] https://fitbee.app
| jablongo wrote:
| The article claims that none of these apps use "depth analysis",
| but newer iPhones have this capability. I would guess at least
| some of these apps are using some kind of volumetric analysis for
| the food when available.
| jraines wrote:
| The benefit of AI as a feature in calorie counting apps is great.
| But you have to track stuff manually for a while to realize the
| benefit. Specifically: using AI for restaurant meals is a
| convenient starting point, from which you use your hard-won feel
| for weight & caloric density of things to tweak the first pass to
| something closer to the mark.
|
| As of now I would not at all trust a fully AI calorie counting
| app
| marcellus23 wrote:
| This is exactly correct. I find AI in my food tracking app
| (FoodNoms) to be really useful, but no, you cannot rely on it
| on its own. You always have to tweak the results to match what
| you feel in your gut (no pun intended) the counts should be.
| Interestingly, very similar situation to using AI for code: you
| shouldn't just blindly trust what it puts out, but if you know
| what you're doing, it can save you a lot of time.
| wnorris510 wrote:
| 100%. You should not trust photo based calorie tracking and
| should only use it when there is no other realistic choice
| (e.g. eating out).
|
| You especially should not trust an app that does not do any
| research on the accuracy of it's algorithm or claims to be
| "consistently accurate" as many of them do currently. The truth
| is these algorithms have the potential to be accurate when
| values are averaged out over the long term, but dish to dish
| they will have occasionally wildly inaccurate results.
| davidcbc wrote:
| > You especially should not trust an app that does not do any
| research on the accuracy of it's algorithm or claims to be
| "consistently accurate" as many of them do currently.
|
| Your website says:
|
| > SnapCalorie is the first app where you can take a picture
| of any meal and get an accurate calorie count and nutrition
| in seconds.
|
| So which is it? Can you get an accurate calorie count of a
| meal from a picture or not?
| cochne wrote:
| I started using an AI calorie tracking app. For non-branded
| foods, the calorie counting is pretty inaccurate and sometimes
| very off. However, having an app that can track pictures and
| create short descriptions that someone else (my trainer) can
| easily review has been pretty helpful.
| jablongo wrote:
| Establishing ground truth for this is not easy. Often the labeled
| calories on foods are quite inaccurate themselves, based on n=1
| bomb calorimetry tests. There are also incentives that may lead
| to lower than actual reported calories on the label.
| fossuser wrote:
| I suspect none of this stuff will matter in the near term. People
| will just take ozempic or whatever the best iteration is and be
| done with it.
|
| I've lost substantial weight (75lbs) the hard way multiple times,
| it's doable but it sucks. If the drugs make it easy with
| seemingly no downside then why waste time with this other stuff.
|
| Use the drugs, lose the weight, then when thin add in an exercise
| regimen if you don't have one.
| sudobash1 wrote:
| I expect that plenty of these apps are or will be mining these
| photos for data about their users. I know the cat is already out
| of the bag as far as online tracking goes, but until now,
| tracking every meal & snack someone eats has been impossible
| (except perhaps for the most consummate doordash user).
|
| And the companies most interested in the data would be the large
| food corporations who bear a lot of responsibility for getting us
| into this obesity crisis in the first place.
| foxyv wrote:
| Calorie counting is so unreliable it hardly even matters. The
| calorie measurements are way off. There are so many sources of
| macronutrients and they are all digested differently and lead to
| so many different amounts of "Fuel" for the body. Just the
| different types of carbohydrates are bad enough. An actually
| accurate food label would look like the spec sheet for a 5th
| generation fighter jet.
|
| This doesn't even take into account the variations in the human
| body. Some people digest different types of foods better than
| others. Then there are the gut microbiomes of each individual. By
| the time you get done, if you have counted 2000 calories you
| could be off by 25% or more.
|
| The big advantage that makes calorie counting work is that it
| makes people actually think about what they are eating.
| alis0nlaura wrote:
| SnapCalorie is a very useful tool, and not just for calorie
| counting but for macros and solving for nutrient deficiency.
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