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Inefficient calorie logging workflow and poor meal scanning

💚 healthproduct problem9 reports ●●●●● severity 3/5

A MyFitnessPal user reports that the app's user interface forces a summary page to load every time the app is opened, creating friction for frequent logging, and notes that the meal scanner feature is highly inaccurate for tracking meals that are not manually weighed.

Who's affected: A MyFitnessPal user who tracks meals multiple times per day and possibly others who rely on the meal scanner feature.

What people do today

🔧 Fix this

Ideas a builder, maker or community group could start on:

  1. A mobile app setting that allows users to bypass the summary page and default directly to the food logging screen.
  2. An AI-powered meal scanner tool that uses computer vision to better estimate portion sizes and identify ingredients from photos.
  3. A browser-based or mobile shortcut widget that provides a one-tap direct link to the 'Add Food' interface.
  4. A settings toggle to disable gamification features like streak animations and fireworks.
  5. A cross-meal search feature that allows users to pull saved meals from any time slot into the current entry.
I want to build this

Real voices

“Everytime you open to log it automatically opens a summary page... it’s gets massively annoying. The meal scanner is the worst I’ve used.”

Source: App Store review: myfitnesspal

“the “streak” celebration that I have to stop and click out of while it shoots fireworks at my eyes... the issue of when you create your own recipe and you say it serves 2 ppl but then you put olive oil and it automatically puts that your recipe calls for 1 whole gallon”

Source: App Store review: myfitnesspal

“Every update brings new features that are annoying, like the confetti with almost every entry that continues despite numerous complaints (mine included). This week’s update added a link to a “tip” where the swipe function had been, no way to bypass it.”

Source: App Store review: myfitnesspal

“it is so hard to see now how many calories you have left, what any of your meals involved and how many calories or any of your nutritional data.”

Source: App Store review: myfitnesspal

“I had to search for each ingredient and then I had to choose that it was for a certain meal today, like breakfast. No, I’m not eating the whole thing today, that’s eight meals.”

Source: App Store review: myfitnesspal

“This app keeps changing my personal settings of calories goals to their default recommended calorie. ... And the bar code scan for detecting calories often doesn’t work.”

Source: App Store review: myfitnesspal

“Your arbitrary minimum 1,200 calorie requirement doesn’t make sense.”

Source: App Store review: myfitnesspal

“It locks up all the time because of the ad on the bottom of the screen. I can no longer rotate the app and use it in landscape format which means I can no longer see my breakdown of macros per meal. I have to go through 50 extra steps to now log my food.”

Source: App Store review: myfitnesspal

“Someone in marketing told them they needed AI and apparently they outsourced it to someone’s 80-year-old parent who logged into ChatGPT with their AOL email.”

Source: App Store review: myfitnesspal

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