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This is pretty marvelous. I have always wanted to create something like this, but the details have always seemed daunting to me. I couldn't think of a way of m

by physcab 13y ago

This is pretty marvelous. I have always wanted to create something like this, but the details have always seemed daunting to me. I couldn't think of a way of merging recipes I liked with nutritional facts and then assembling building blocks for meal plans automatically without a ton of manual labor in data entry. Are these recipes crowdsourced? Have you just been taking copious nutritional notes for a while? If you figured out a way to integrate something like Epicurious or AllRecipes complete with pictures and reviews, it would make using this site so much more fun. Right now it feels mechanical which is great for people who see food as just fuel intake. But for me food is more than just fuel, its an experience meant to be enjoyed and savored.

papa_bear 13y ago
You're right that there's a lot of work before having even something basically functional - the first version of the site only had about 50 foods to pick from that I entered by hand, all very basic (e.g. ground beef, avocado), and it would throw them at you in a random combination. Then I found the USDA food database, but their formatting is a mess and I spent a couple weeks cleaning it up by hand. The recipes are almost all crowdsourced, and it's probably one of the site's weakest points right now since there aren't a ton of them. I'd definitely like to integrate with a larger recipe site, but the biggest issue is matching their ingredients to the USDA foods to accurately guess the nutrition - tying it to individual foods rather than just importing the recipe's nutrition makes it easy for users to modify the recipes if they want. I'm working on some stuff to make it happen though, so hopefully soon!
- zecho 13y ago
  As a fitness nut and a bit of a foodie, I love this site, but I'm glad you recognize that the recipe database leaves much to be desired. With almost every nutrition app or website I've seen, there's such a ridiculous emphasis on prepackaged foods or sources like restaurants. I'd be super pleased if you could pull of nutrition calculations based off of individual foods within a recipe. All in all, though, this is fantastic. I'm going to definitely give a try.
- danhauk 13y ago
  I haven't dug too much into it, but I met the guys from [Nutribu](http://nutribu.com/ http://nutribu.com/) about a month ago. They are doing some cool stuff with collecting nutritional information and supplying an API. It might be worth it to check it out and see if it's something that could be useful to you or not.
- fireflash38 13y ago
  Could you use wolfram alpha to calculate nutritional info? I'm not sure about their usage policies though...
- itsybitsycoder 13y ago
  I wouldn't say the site isn't basically functional. It seems like it's improved a lot since I first tried it out (it recommended I eat olive oil, and just olive oil, for lunch). Now it comes up with some interesting meal ideas I wouldn't have thought of myself.

by physcab 13y ago

papa_bear 13y ago

You're right that there's a lot of work before having even something basically functional - the first version of the site only had about 50 foods to pick from that I entered by hand, all very basic (e.g. ground beef, avocado), and it would throw them at you in a random combination. Then I found the USDA food database, but their formatting is a mess and I spent a couple weeks cleaning it up by hand. The recipes are almost all crowdsourced, and it's probably one of the site's weakest points right now since there aren't a ton of them. I'd definitely like to integrate with a larger recipe site, but the biggest issue is matching their ingredients to the USDA foods to accurately guess the nutrition - tying it to individual foods rather than just importing the recipe's nutrition makes it easy for users to modify the recipes if they want. I'm working on some stuff to make it happen though, so hopefully soon!

zecho 13y ago
As a fitness nut and a bit of a foodie, I love this site, but I'm glad you recognize that the recipe database leaves much to be desired. With almost every nutrition app or website I've seen, there's such a ridiculous emphasis on prepackaged foods or sources like restaurants. I'd be super pleased if you could pull of nutrition calculations based off of individual foods within a recipe. All in all, though, this is fantastic. I'm going to definitely give a try.
danhauk 13y ago
I haven't dug too much into it, but I met the guys from [Nutribu](http://nutribu.com/ http://nutribu.com/) about a month ago. They are doing some cool stuff with collecting nutritional information and supplying an API. It might be worth it to check it out and see if it's something that could be useful to you or not.
fireflash38 13y ago
Could you use wolfram alpha to calculate nutritional info? I'm not sure about their usage policies though...
itsybitsycoder 13y ago
I wouldn't say the site isn't basically functional. It seems like it's improved a lot since I first tried it out (it recommended I eat olive oil, and just olive oil, for lunch). Now it comes up with some interesting meal ideas I wouldn't have thought of myself.