I Learned More Than I Thought I Would From Using Food-Tracking Apps

I do my best to eat well and stay in shape. But as a mom of three, it’s often tough to remember what I’ve eaten today, or even how much water I’ve taken in.

Thankfully, a new slate of food-tracking apps—often powered by computer vision and artificial intelligence—has arrived to fill in the blank spaces in my memory, and nudge me toward a healthier existence. I downloaded a few food tracker apps, such as BitePal, Hoot, Lose It!, and MyFitnessPal, to better understand the ins and outs of my day-to-day meals. I also talked to nutrition experts to understand what insights these apps can provide, and what their limitations are.

The overarching benefit of food tracker apps is that they help with awareness of and accountability around what we're eating, says Meridan Zerner, a registered dietitian in Dallas, Texas. “We're busy humans, right? Let me pause for a second and give some thought to this and be intentional about what I'm eating,” Zerner says. “Oh gosh, I didn't have any fiber, or I didn't have enough iron. OK, well, let me do it differently tomorrow. Let me accommodate because now I've got some good feedback.”

Zerner says this type of guidance is good for increasing awareness because people tend to underestimate their food intake by 20 to 50 percent.

Tracking Time

To start, most of the apps had me enter the basics: my current weight and height, and my food intake goals. All of the apps I tried promised to help me either lose weight, maintain my weight, or even gain weight, depending on what I was hoping to accomplish.

Some of the apps required a subscription for basic features like food logging, and the fees were around $35 per year. Other apps let me do the basic food logging for free, but additional services like nutrient tracking or granular coaching advice required a subscription, with prices being as much as $80 per year.

The apps each asked me to enter basic information about my body measurements. Some got more specific, asking about my habits, how active I am, what type of diet I maintain (vegan versus meat eater), and the quality of my sleep. Once I entered all this, each app calculated the approximate calories I need each day.

While I was excited to get that information, I was surprised by the range of calorie recommendations across apps based on my height and weight, which made it hard to know exactly how many calories I really need each day.

“All of these apps, when they're making calorie recommendations and energy recommendations, are going to have to make those based on an equation,” Zerner says. The equations are likely not able to factor in thing that vary between individuals such as hormones, bone size, and genetics, she says.

“That is one of the advantages of checking in with a registered, licensed dietician,” she says. “We can actually do a resting metabolic rate test to figure out, ‘Hey, this is exactly what your burn rate is.’ Sometimes it follows the predicted equation, and sometimes it doesn't.”

As my day progressed, I entered the types and amounts of food I ate at each snack or meal, and each app counted the calories and told me how much protein versus fiber I consumed, how many calories in total I had eaten each day, and how many calories I had left to meet my goal weight.

A few of the apps incorporated AI analysis through the phone's camera, so I could take a photo of my meal, and it would estimate the number of calories per dish. It sounds convenient, but there were significant differences from one app to another. For example, one app calculated a Mediterranean bowl at around 1,000 calories, while another was much higher, so I had to confirm the ingredients and adjust the estimates myself.

Of course it's not just about the raw calorie count. One of the benefits of food-tracking apps is that they help us learn whether we are eating enough nutritious food and drinking enough water throughout the day. “Am I eating at consistent times, [and] not depriving myself?” says Adee Levinstein, a registered dietitian and eating disorder specialist with Eating Recovery Center in Chicago. “Am I having a balance of nutrients and a variety of foods? How can we add in the things that feel good and make us feel satisfied for longer?”

For example, I tend to eat more carbs than protein, and my water intake decreases throughout the day. Receiving reminders from the apps encouraged me to pay better attention to my meals and drink more.

As fun as it was to scan and input my meals, one downside is that I’m a perfectionist and wanted to achieve my calorie and nutrition goals each day. I started to obsess over my meals more than I should. Zerner says that can happen to someone who is more of a black-and-white thinker, which can increase anxiety or reinforce perfectionism.

This black and white thinking can lead people to believe they are “good” or “bad” because they ate this or that, which is an unhealthy way of looking at one’s diet, says Levinstein. “[Food apps] can very easily moralize or demonize foods when in reality we all need calories, we all need carbohydrates, we all need proteins, we all need fats,” she says.

I probably won’t be tracking my food intake consistently going forward because of my perfectionist habits, but if I do want to check my intake now and then, I found myself going back to the Lose It! app more often than the others. It offered a detailed analysis of my intake, it made it easy to log my daily workouts, and it let me scan barcodes on food packages, which I thought gave me a more accurate calorie count.

I’ll try to drink more water, work on balancing my carbs and protein, and remember that small amounts of butter, oil, and mayonnaise can add a lot of calories to a seemingly healthy meal. I’ll also keep in mind that any type of calorie counting can be addictive, and we all need balance.

“In real life, your nutrition has to work in the gray space,” Zerner says. “It’s OK if there are days when you're a little over and then days when you're a little under. It wasn't a failure, it wasn't all or nothing.”

These apps are just one piece of the puzzle for maintaining a balanced, healthy diet. “It's a good snapshot,” says Zerner. “Let's use it and learn from it, build on it, and let it be one of many tools in the health toolbox.”