7 ms·

Show HN: Intuitive nutrition information

39 points by gusgordon 3y ago

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 :) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10077618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10077618

CrypticShift 3y ago
While you certainly succeeded in simplifying the UX, I'm not for simplifying the data on food. Is there any database of "concentrations of vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients" you could integrate? 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]. [1] https://www.bionutrient.org/bionutrientmeter https://www.bionutrient.org/bionutrientmeter
- gusgordon 3y ago
  Totally - right now it's using the USDA food nutrient database [1] which has all nutrients, so all the nutrients on the back-end are there. Calories is the most important thing to the majority of people (in my experience), so there's a balance between showing too much information vs. keeping things simple. Probably should just add a setting to show everything, though. [1] https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/download-datasets.html https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/download-datasets.html
ivansavz 3y ago
That's cool, but it seems to be limited to macros and working under the assumption that a calorie is a calorie. 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification [2] https://www.fao.org/3/ca5644en/ca5644en.pdf https://www.fao.org/3/ca5644en/ca5644en.pdf [3] https://world.openfoodfacts.org/nova https://world.openfoodfacts.org/nova
- XorNot 3y ago
  Why the hell would a person need an app to tell "how processed" a food is? This is the one bit of information that is contextually obvious.
  - stabbles 3y ago
    It's just a nuance to the rule of thumb, that doesn't warrant such a strong reaction? 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?
    - getwiththeprog 3y ago
      My 1st rule of thumb: Avoid processed foods. This way I don't have to really think much more about what to eat. 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.
  - solardev 3y ago
    I don't know, it's not really easy for me (as an ignorant American who grew up on junk food) to guess how much processing is in food. I dunno if there's much difference between cow milk, soy milk, oat milk, etc. How is tofu or blueberry yogurt made? What's in a slice of sandwich cheese? Are these fancy organic crackers any different from Ritz? What's in olive oil vs canola oil? Vegan butter vs margarine? 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).
Midnight1938 3y ago
[dead]
beefman 3y ago
Nice! Howabout adding a way to link to a meal?
hackyhacky 3y ago
I entered "Cheerios" and was told one box of Cheerios cereal is 61 calories; and that one box of blueberry Cheerios is 611 calories. So I think that we need better quantification of units than just "box," since presumably these measurements are dealing with boxes of different sizes.
- solardev 3y ago
  Man, those GMO blueberries are really getting out of hand, aren't they?
  - Lord-Jobo 3y ago
    It's 2023 and we don't have GMO blueberries the size of a basketball yet? Lazy ass scientists need to get back to work.
- tschumacher 3y ago
  Similarly, 1 cup unsalted peanuts is listed as having 10x the calories of 1 cup peanuts. The latter probably refers to peanuts in their skins while the former refers only to the nuts which would be packed much denser. A photo of the food could help here.
rareitem 3y ago
How about adding our own data ?
sirobg 3y ago
Seems cool! Congrats! 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.
3pm 3y ago
Have to comment since I've been listening to Dr. Lustig lately (https://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM?si=6mS-3SKI7R4zOdYT https://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM?si=6mS-3SKI7R4zOdYT). 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/ https://perfact.co:8443/Nova/
- notfed 3y ago
  Adding "fiber" in the results (and changing "carbs" to "net carbs") would help. 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.
  - lbotos 3y ago
    It’s a successful propaganda campaign. There are many people that wrongly believe that “natural sugars” are somehow better/more nutritious. (My mother is one, and eats way too much fruit and fruit juice because “it’s natural!”)
    - getwiththeprog 3y ago
      natural sugars come with free vitamins and minerals. but sure, you can have too much natural sugars.
  - aio2 3y ago
    Added sugar doesn't have as many nutrients, and is absorbed by the body much more quickly.
getwiththeprog 3y ago
Great interface, What source(s) are you getting the data from?
- sirobg 3y ago
  Answer available in a comment from OP: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38810773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38810773
99catmaster 3y ago
Cronometer exists already and does this a million times better
- sirobg 3y ago
  Didn't know Chronometer so I checked: you have to sign up. This already makes OP project better for me (subjective of course)
abc3 3y ago
I’m a big fan of MacroFactor. It’s one of my few subscriptions. It’s the only tracker that works for me. The developers make understanding nutrition as simple as possible without pretending it can be oversimplified.
cainxinth 3y ago
Unrelated to the actual product, the kerning in the wordmark needs work.

39 points by gusgordon 3y ago

CrypticShift 3y ago

While you certainly succeeded in simplifying the UX, I'm not for simplifying the data on food. Is there any database of "concentrations of vitamins, minerals, and micronutrients" you could integrate? 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]. [1] https://www.bionutrient.org/bionutrientmeter https://www.bionutrient.org/bionutrientmeter

gusgordon 3y ago
Totally - right now it's using the USDA food nutrient database [1] which has all nutrients, so all the nutrients on the back-end are there. Calories is the most important thing to the majority of people (in my experience), so there's a balance between showing too much information vs. keeping things simple. Probably should just add a setting to show everything, though. [1] https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/download-datasets.html https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/download-datasets.html

ivansavz 3y ago

That's cool, but it seems to be limited to macros and working under the assumption that a calorie is a calorie. 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nova_classification [2] https://www.fao.org/3/ca5644en/ca5644en.pdf https://www.fao.org/3/ca5644en/ca5644en.pdf [3] https://world.openfoodfacts.org/nova https://world.openfoodfacts.org/nova

XorNot 3y ago
Why the hell would a person need an app to tell "how processed" a food is? This is the one bit of information that is contextually obvious.
- stabbles 3y ago
  It's just a nuance to the rule of thumb, that doesn't warrant such a strong reaction? 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?
  - getwiththeprog 3y ago
    My 1st rule of thumb: Avoid processed foods. This way I don't have to really think much more about what to eat. 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.
- solardev 3y ago
  I don't know, it's not really easy for me (as an ignorant American who grew up on junk food) to guess how much processing is in food. I dunno if there's much difference between cow milk, soy milk, oat milk, etc. How is tofu or blueberry yogurt made? What's in a slice of sandwich cheese? Are these fancy organic crackers any different from Ritz? What's in olive oil vs canola oil? Vegan butter vs margarine? 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).

Midnight1938 3y ago

[dead]

beefman 3y ago

Nice! Howabout adding a way to link to a meal?

hackyhacky 3y ago

I entered "Cheerios" and was told one box of Cheerios cereal is 61 calories; and that one box of blueberry Cheerios is 611 calories. So I think that we need better quantification of units than just "box," since presumably these measurements are dealing with boxes of different sizes.

solardev 3y ago
Man, those GMO blueberries are really getting out of hand, aren't they?
- Lord-Jobo 3y ago
  It's 2023 and we don't have GMO blueberries the size of a basketball yet? Lazy ass scientists need to get back to work.
tschumacher 3y ago
Similarly, 1 cup unsalted peanuts is listed as having 10x the calories of 1 cup peanuts. The latter probably refers to peanuts in their skins while the former refers only to the nuts which would be packed much denser. A photo of the food could help here.

rareitem 3y ago

How about adding our own data ?

sirobg 3y ago

Seems cool! Congrats! 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.

3pm 3y ago

Have to comment since I've been listening to Dr. Lustig lately (https://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM?si=6mS-3SKI7R4zOdYT https://youtu.be/dBnniua6-oM?si=6mS-3SKI7R4zOdYT). 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/ https://perfact.co:8443/Nova/

notfed 3y ago
Adding "fiber" in the results (and changing "carbs" to "net carbs") would help. 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.
- lbotos 3y ago
  It’s a successful propaganda campaign. There are many people that wrongly believe that “natural sugars” are somehow better/more nutritious. (My mother is one, and eats way too much fruit and fruit juice because “it’s natural!”)
  - getwiththeprog 3y ago
    natural sugars come with free vitamins and minerals. but sure, you can have too much natural sugars.
- aio2 3y ago
  Added sugar doesn't have as many nutrients, and is absorbed by the body much more quickly.

getwiththeprog 3y ago

Great interface, What source(s) are you getting the data from?

sirobg 3y ago
Answer available in a comment from OP: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38810773 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38810773

99catmaster 3y ago

Cronometer exists already and does this a million times better

sirobg 3y ago
Didn't know Chronometer so I checked: you have to sign up. This already makes OP project better for me (subjective of course)

abc3 3y ago

I’m a big fan of MacroFactor. It’s one of my few subscriptions. It’s the only tracker that works for me. The developers make understanding nutrition as simple as possible without pretending it can be oversimplified.

cainxinth 3y ago

Unrelated to the actual product, the kerning in the wordmark needs work.