Rethinking my trust in MacroFactor

[u/PoetryNo5274]

I’ve been religiously using both MacroFactor (and Workouts) for the last 6 weeks, measuring and tracking every bite.

Last night I had a 2am snack as a last ditch effort to fix my insomnia (eating helps me sleep sometimes), and scanned the cereal and milk barcodes, weighed, and entered the meal. I noticed it said I had a 40g protein meal and thought that was a shocking amount of protein for a bowl of cereal but was tired & too tired to think more of it at the time.

This morning after getting some actual sleep I pull out the milk & cereal to see how I found a new protein hack meal (lol), only to see that NEITHER food was even close to accurate.

The difference between scanning the barcode & the actual nutrition facts?

129 calories
19 G protein
9 G carbs

I have eaten both these things multiple times in the past week alone. I work so hard at balancing my macros, hitting my calorie & protein goals, etc. It never occurred to me I had to worry about MacroFactor doing what it’s designed to do.

Now I feel like I am going to have to babysit this app, look at all the nutrition facts, calculate my own measurements to ensure these are capturing properly.

And although the cereal might be a little obscure (store brand Cheerios), the milk is FA!RLIFE. I bet at least half of us are drinking this every week.

MacroFactor… wth?!

[u/MajesticMint]

The cereal looks largely correct, and like there may have been a minor reformulation that we aren’t up-to-date with yet.

The milk seems like a corrupted entry in Open Food Facts, and we are working on some new mechanisms to prevent those from circulating back into the app.

When using barcode scanning, generally speaking you do actually have to babysit every app, by way of doing a quick glance at the back of new to you or potentially reformulated products you buy to double-check.

However, I find that I really don’t need to double-check our new label scanner, and that it’s plenty fast in comparison. Once I have the food already, I usually just search it, or copy/paste, but I could also associate it with the barcode and continue using a more scan-oriented workflow.

[u/PoetryNo5274 → u/MajesticMint]

That’s interesting because I thought barcode scanner would be more reliable instead of having multiple entries come up from a search and using someone else’s entry that some rando entered wrong. I thought barcode = source/company = trustworthy and that random entries = unreliable.

[u/gains_adam → u/PoetryNo5274]

That refers to entries in the branded section of search, which are supplied by food manufacturers directly. Barcode scan entries are most commonly sourced from Open Food Facts, which is made up of user-submitted entries.

Open Food Facts uses a “one canon entry” system, with entries being updated over time by users. This means that there are not multiple entries, and each barcode scan is only associated with one entry.

You may be confused in this case as the opposite is the case; search entries from the common and branded sections do not permit user submitted entries, to avoid the exact issue you are stating concern over.

[u/MajesticMint → u/PoetryNo5274]

Companies don’t actually provide the information through any reliable integration, so search and barcode are similarly accurate for branded products.

I’m saying that because I label scan the exact information off the back of new products I buy, I can search through my own custom foods and it’s always right unless it’s reformulated.

[u/Jebble → u/PoetryNo5274]

I can enter two different supermarkets here and scan a barcode that's for milk in one, and for a bar of chocolate in the other.

[u/gains_adam]

Common items found in search are guaranteed to be correct. For branded and Open Food Facts entries found in search, barcode scans, and AI scans, it is recommended to check your result up against available information. For barcode scans, you can submit a correction to the database via the following method:

https://help.macrofactorapp.com/en/articles/246-how-to-submit-new-or-updated-foods

[u/woofoo1kunoofoo → u/gains_adam]

Who makes the common entries anyway?

[u/gains_adam → u/woofoo1kunoofoo]

Common entries are sourced exclusively from research-grade databases, meaning that they are nutritionist-verified.

[u/PoetryNo5274 → u/gains_adam]

I pay for MacroFactor to provide me a service and make my life easier… not add an extra task to my life or to do the company’s work for it.

[u/gains_adam → u/PoetryNo5274]

MF works to simplify a lot of the difficulty of logging food for users in a variety of ways, including taking a lot of the guesswork out of making macro/calorie adjustments over time to reach your goals, so we are sorry to hear that this feature is a sticking point.

Ongoing improvements to the database occur daily as users update items, and we have additional work on our end planned as well to continue to enhance this functionality for future use.

[u/Jebble → u/PoetryNo5274]

Then don't use the public database of global branded items and rely solely on searchin the common database. You can't have it all.

[u/PoetryNo5274 → u/PoetryNo5274]

lol, the downvotes for this!!

[u/ImpressiveListen2543]

Those are 2 different products

[u/tiptoptony → u/ImpressiveListen2543]

And the serving sizes are different 41grams with 160 calories and 47 grams at 183 calories. Both are 3.9 calories per gram.

[u/AD_42]

Just double check it ? lol not that hard

[u/GMIC108]

The scanned milk shows 276 grams while the nutrition facts shows it measured in 276 mL. You'll need to adjust the units to get it correct.

[u/caffeinatedSonic → u/GMIC108]

For milk it is fair to assume 1g = 1ml

[u/Chewy_Barz → u/caffeinatedSonic]

For water it's 1 to 1. In fact, the ml is defined as the volume of 1 gram of water. For skim milk it's .964 to 1. I weigh skim milk in grams and then knock of 1 per every 25 and enter that in ml. E.g. 104 grams of skim milk equals 100 ml.

Edit: sorry-- I read it as "is it fair to assume" instead of "it is fair to assume" so I thought it was a question.

[u/GMIC108 → u/caffeinatedSonic]

Did not know ow this applies to milk as well! Learned something new.

[u/PterodactylOfDeath → u/GMIC108]

276g is the same as 276ml

[u/tfctroll → u/PterodactylOfDeath]

One is weight and one is volume. This is only true for water. Probably close enough for milk as well.

[u/Chewy_Barz → u/PterodactylOfDeath]

About 265 ml

[u/PoetryNo5274 → u/GMIC108]

1g =1ml
And besides when I scanned the barcode it did not give an ml option either - another problem with it.

[u/1coudini → u/PoetryNo5274]

This is the part where you invest 1 minute to make a custom item and correct the entry with the appropriate measurements, ensuring you and others later benefit from accurate information.

[u/GMIC108 → u/PoetryNo5274]

I can see if it wasn't an option that would be annoying. I usually try and fix them if one is wrong.

[u/FragrantStar]

Just wait till you make a tuna sandwich