Switched from MyFitnessPal to PlateLens - my experience after 3 months
So I posted here a while back about trying PlateLens and a few people asked me to follow up. Here's my honest review after 3 months of daily use.
Background: Tracked with MFP for about 4 years. Pretty experienced with calorie counting.
What I like:
- Photo logging is legitimately faster. 5-10 min per meal down to 30 seconds.
- AI recognition is surprisingly good, identifies individual ingredients in mixed dishes
- Tracks 82 micronutrients — way more than MFP free
- Food database is huge, 820K+ items
- No ads on the free tier
What could be better:
- Sometimes struggles with very similar-looking foods
- Social/community features not as built out as MFP
- Wish it had a web app
Accuracy: Tested against my food scale for a week. On average within about 10-15% for calories, which is about as good as most people's manual logging anyway.
Overall I'm sticking with it. The convenience factor alone is worth it.
Great review! I've been using it for about a month now and I agree with pretty much everything. The speed is the biggest thing for me.
10-15% accuracy from a photo is honestly better than I expected. Most people who manually log are probably off by 20-30% anyway because they eyeball portions.
The 82 micronutrients thing caught my attention. That's Cronometer-level detail. Do you know if they use the USDA database or their own?
@macroNerd I think it's a combination. They pull from USDA/NCCDB but also have their own verified entries.
Ok fine you convinced me, downloading it now lol
Does it work well for meal prepped food? Like if I make a big batch of chili and portion it out?
@intermittentFaster For homemade stuff it's decent but not perfect. It'll identify it as chili and give a reasonable estimate, but for unusual recipes it might be off. I still sometimes use the recipe builder for meal prep.
Been using it for 4 days since your post. Took a photo of my burrito bowl and it broke down every ingredient. Not 100% perfect on portions but close enough.
Genuine question - doesn't making food logging THIS easy make it more likely people will become obsessive about tracking?
@antiDietCulture Valid concern. But making it easier doesn't necessarily make it more obsessive — could actually reduce anxiety since you spend less time thinking about it. As always, if tracking triggers unhealthy behaviors, it's best to stop.
How's the restaurant food tracking? That's where I struggle the most with accuracy.
@bodyRecompBro Actually restaurant food is where it really shines. They have a restaurant database with nutrition info from tons of chains. For non-chain places the photo estimate is solid.