Hey everyone,
I've been building this nutrition tracker and calorie counter recently, after being frustrated by existing products for ages. I built a similar app 8 years ago [1], but came back to this problem again since there are still no good solutions here. Lmk your thoughts and improvement ideas :) |
The site shows that 1 can of Coca-Cola has fewer calories and less carbs than a medium apple: 90 vs 122 calories, 25 vs 30 gram of carbs. There is no other information, e.g no fiber content or added sugars section. Would this lead someone to believe, against common sense, that Coke is equivalent or even a healthier choice?
Edit: For those interested, here is a link to a similar system that contains more information (albeit not as polished): https://perfact.co:8443/Nova/
I never understood the motive of highlighting "added sugar" though. Who cares if it's considered "added" or not? I recently was browsing the cranberry juice section at a grocery store, and without going into detail, it was obvious that some brands are gaming the definition of "added". Also, many natural sugar sources have unhealthy levels of sugar. Perhaps a metric like sugar density or caloric density would be more useful.
I know this would defeat the purpose of a "simple" tracker, but I believe that we need to support the message that food is "complex" [1].
I agree that most products - I stumbled upon and tested - in this space are frustrating.
Would be nice to have a good UX to split food by meals (and have subtotals). But maybe that is too complex and you were not aiming for that!
Additional feedback: I think knowing if the food is weighted raw or cooked is pretty important. Sorry if I missed something but I couldn't tell if the "whole wheat pasta" were cooked or not. Uncooked was available for rice, though.
It would be much more interesting to me to have an easy way to access the information about "how processed" a food is, for example using the NOVA classification[1,2,3] system or something like that. I'm not sure if you can access that as a DB download or an API of some sort, but worth looking into.
If you can't get data on this, then I'm pretty sure you can approximate the nova score by based on the "added sugars" and fibre contents... although it would be difficult to tell apart "undisturbed fibre" vs. fibre added later on as additive.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification [2] https://www.fao.org/3/ca5644en/ca5644en.pdf [3] https://world.openfoodfacts.org/nova
This already makes OP project better for me (subjective of course)
If a 1st order rule of thumb is keeping caloric contents in check, a 2nd order rule doing that for nutrients individually, I wonder if someone knows a good but easy third order rule of thumb that takes into account processing.
Something like "when two foods have roughly identical nutrients, prefer the one that has ingredients you could buy or make at home" might either not help cause there are no two such options to choose from, or it's too obvious (fresh pizza at the supermarket is worse than a handmade pizza)
Is there a good rule of thumb that helps you pick relatively healthy foods in a world where many foods are ultra-processed already, and can't really be avoided?
For example: a sliced apple is technically processed food, but what is it sprayed with?
Most of the grocery store is made up of processed flavored glops of one sort or another. The Nova classification is new to me, but would certainly be interesting information (though possibly also fearmongering).
but sure, you can have too much natural sugars.
[1] sugar is actually multiple sugars, and different sugars (glucose vs fructose vs sucrose) - https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/sucrose-glucose-fructos...
Most overweight people (the audience of a calorie counting app) don't need more nutrients, they need less calories. Besides, fruit is a really poor source of vitamins/minerals in general, so this is a weak ground to stand on.
> [added sugar is] absorbed by the body much more quickly.
You're using circular logic.
And yes, ultra-processed foods are easy to avoid if you go the right suppliers, such as grocers. Supermarkeups are definitely difficult places to eat well.
At the end of the day, how do you really know what chemicals are used on the farm? The cost of tracking anything is astronomical. I.E. cost of a bolt in airline industry.
Lastly, at least for food: producers, distributors, end-users (stores), and everyone else uses different software with proprietary protocols and the margins don't really incentivize anyone from switching.
[0]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0362028X2... [1]: https://www.supplychainbrain.com/articles/35217-chipotle-zer...
Well given the fact that cow milk exists in nature, has been drank by humans for thousands of years, and the other two are trying to be like cow milk, right off the bat, I think a good working hypothesis is that cow milk is less processed than soy and oat milk. They may pasteurize and homogenize it and add some vitamins, but it is fundamentally pretty close to what came out of the cow. Soy mil and oat milk, need a lot more processing to turn soy and oats into something at resembles milk.
I feel like this should be information available on all labeling. I have no idea what "guar gum" is, and whether that's more processed than "enriched wheat flour", and whatever the hell "natural flavors" are.
I haven't studied this topic much since the days of Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, and I really appreciated Chris's scientifically grounded overview. I think I'm going to get the book and seriously reexamine my eating habits in this new year.
Thank you again for linking this!
Spoiler: Keep it simple and learn to cook.