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by m_ke 518 days ago
At Bitesnap we were surprised at how much interest there was from researchers to use our app for diet tracking. It turns out giving people a piece of paper to write “grilled cheese sandwich for lunch” is not a scalable and reliable way to collect research quality data.

We even worked with USDA on putting together a food logging dataset: https://agdatacommons.nal.usda.gov/articles/dataset/SNAPMe_A...
3 comments
wnorris510 517 days ago
We've also been surprised at SnapCalorie how many researchers have approached us to use the app for more accurate diet tracking for medical study participants. The LiDAR based portion size has been a huge draw for them.

If anyone wants to check out our app or research its on our site: https://www.snapcalorie.com/

PS: Bitesnap was an awesome app!

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nitwit005 517 days ago
Feels kind of incredible that something as advanced as laser imaging is being used to measure sandwich size.
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felideon 517 days ago
What happened to your app? I was on such a research team (Scripps) that used your app for the study (PROGRESS).
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m_ke 517 days ago
Unfortunately it was shut down after I sold the company to MyFitnessPal.

I was a shitty business person who thought it made sense to try and build a free consumer product on a bootstrapped budget. We had some traction on the B2B side that paid the bills but COVID took a dent in it and it would have taken a long time to build back the revenue stream selling to healthcare companies (tip for others, it can take 6-18months to close healthcare deals and another 6-18months to integrate)

We had a few offers to sell the company and took the one that seemed to make the most sense.

If there’s anything I can do to help out my email is michalwols at the Google email provider domain

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felideon 517 days ago
The study ended so no worries. In any case, congrats on the exit!
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mtntreks 517 days ago
This doesn't surprise me.

Just trying to keep track of calories for myself stupid things like supersized slices of bread becoming common in stores can really throw off my expected calorie counts.

It seems like this can completely throw off any attempt at figuring out nutrition from an app or research perspective.

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