There just isn’t enough info in a photo, even for the world’s leading calorie counting expert, to give a sensible estimate of the calories content. Ans even more so for macros.
Add to that the fact vision is still pretty crap and you have a complete joke that I can’t believe anyone is paying for.
I've used the AI features in Lose It and was pretty impressed, not for the caloric estimate, but when given a picture of a breakfast burrito it accurately split it out into the component parts, from there I could manually adjust amounts easily for food I make without having to manually search out every ingredient manually. As an additional tool it is great.
The issue of course is these new apps built with a sole focus of AI images for tracking. With a photo of restaurant food you can't see a sauce and the 5-10g of additional sugar content, can't get accurate guesses of what is in breads/pastas and figuring out general volumes of foods is not possible unless you have some kind of standard size reference in the frame.
Honestly the best use case i have seen is the ability to read a labels and add it to the database. (Similar to an OCR but better)
Correcting errors in MFP is the bane of my existence.
I have tried some other apps but i hated every single one of them for a reason or another and came back to MFP but that was one of the best features i would really love to have
What’s interesting to me is a tool can be terrible at its stated problem and still add value.
I suspect many of the results dieters get is “mere measurement”, e.g. it helps them be more thoughtful, seek education, etc.
So the value of the tool is in its ability to keep them engaged and hopeful (the unstated need), and the actual mechanic doesn’t have to be that good at the stated need.
If I diligently track calories using one of these things and don't lose weight I'll say "screw it" and stop bothering because obviously counting calories doesn't work. I think this is much more likely to be the case because even proper calorie counting is difficult and frustrating
There is a study somewhere that said people who wanted to lose weight and simply tracked their calories (without any attempt at reducing them) LOST weight vs those who did nothing. Awareness alone is valuable.
Yeah. It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out that a Coke Zero looks identical to regular Coca Cola, yet they have vastly different calorie content, to put it mildly.
Sauces loaded with butter, sugar or other goodies will of course be the same story.
However bad these algorithms are (and we're talking very wide intervals in multiple dimensions of uncertainty), you could immediately improve the vision/volume calculation part with a modest change - like requiring a size reference. "Place a unit of currency next to the plate, then take at least two photos of the plate from different angles" can get you pretty close to an accurate volume.
If they aren't doing even that much, then they're not very interested in accuracy at all.
The problem is, if you are serious about losing weight, you need to ideally aim for something like a 300 calorie deficit. Much more and you’ll feel shit, a lot less and it’ll be quite slow or go the other way. It’s quite a fine margin and even tracking using bar codes you’re not going to be perfect.
But even more important - you really gotta track your macros if you want it to work well - and again also not feel crap.
There is no way in hell an AI camera is tracking macros well
You can buy zero fat Greek yogurt that has very low sugar. It’s perfect for losing weight. It’s about 50kcals per 100g. And also super high in protein.
Or you can buy yoghurt that is full of sugar and is 100kcals per 100g and has lots of fat and hardly any protein.
Even a human expert could not tell the difference without tasting them.
* Great Value Original Vanilla Lowfat Yogurt, 32 oz
Serving size 3/4 cup (170g)
1.5g fat
26g carbs (21 of which are sugar)
5g protein
130 kcal
* Great Value Greek Plain Nonfat Yogurt, 32 oz Tub
Serving size 2/3 cup (170g)
7g carbs (7 of which are sugar)
17g protein
100 kcal
* Great Value Light Vanilla Nonfat Yogurt, 32 oz
Serving size 3/4 cup (170g)
15g carbs (12 of which are sugar)
5g protein
80 kcal
If it's only got 50kcal per 100g, then I assume you've got to be relying heavily on indigestible gelling agents to keep the texture reading to the customers as yogurt. I assume that the developer would suggest that a zero-calorie bowl of water and indigestible gelling agents that reads to YOU as yogurt, is not accurately summarized as yogurt, and that this would be a case of user error.
My mistake. This is very close to the greek yogurt I mentioned, but the serving size is different - I was using 170g recommended serving size instead of the standard 100g comparator. Also - all 3g carbs are sugar (naturally occurring).
There just isn’t enough info in a photo, even for the world’s leading calorie counting expert, to give a sensible estimate of the calories content. Ans even more so for macros.
Add to that the fact vision is still pretty crap and you have a complete joke that I can’t believe anyone is paying for.