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by mdergosits 3815 days ago
Is there a comparison to MyFitnessPal? I use that and it's able to import recipes from a link, or scan products using a barcode. How are you getting all of the data for different products? I tried looking up my two favorite brands of yogurt and they weren't there.
1 comments

Thanks for checking it out. In my understanding, MyFitnessPal is oriented toward the fitness crowd, with a focus on daily energy consumption.

After a lot of exploration I decided to limit the scope as much as possible and target home cooks and food bloggers, with a focus on recipes.

I spent a few weeks of my spare time trying to get the parsing of free-text recipes to work (essentially MFP's import from link). The results were decent, but I realized that if it's only 90% accurate I still need a lot of user interface functions (like MFP) to let users edit/fix the inaccurate bits. It started smelling bad so I decided to strip it down to its most basic function.

I have no plans for now to use databases of branded products - the ones I saw were quite expensive and would be more useful for sites like MyFitnessPal, perhaps less useful for recipes/cooking.

> I spent a few weeks of my spare time trying to get the parsing of free-text recipes to work (essentially MFP's import from link). The results were decent, but I realized that if it's only 90% accurate I still need a lot of user interface functions (like MFP) to let users edit/fix the inaccurate bits. It started smelling bad so I decided to strip it down to its most basic function.

As a regular MyFitnessPal user I have to say, their recipe importer leaves a lot to be desired. Whenever I use it, I inevitably have to make corrections because it mapped the parsed ingredient to the wrong item. (And their UI for making corrections is not particularly great either.)

It's probably a good idea that you decided not to go down this road.