Food facts, my free (as in free) Android application

[glennbech]

Hi,

I've written an Android application that can be used to look up nutrition info for about 7k food products. The data is from the U.S. Department of Agriculture

It's absolutely free.

It can be downloaded here; https://play.google....nnbech.nutrinfo

You can also just search for "food facts" in the market application on your phone.

(Oh, and the image on the Google Play! store includes a slab of my home cured bacon :-)

I'd love feedback, and suggestions for improvement or new features on the app. It's definitely still under development.

I have attached a couple of screenshots.

Regards,

Glenn

[lesliec]

Thanks, Glenn.

It looks great. I'm not sure I'd have a use for it, but I hope it does well for you.

[ChrisZ]

I don't have an android phone so I haven't checked it out, but just wondering if you have included common allergy information?

Amongst my friends are people who are lactose intolerant, gluten intolerant, allergic to dairy, allergic to soy, and allergic to peanuts...

Including basic allergy information, for example if something contains gluten or lactose, would be a useful addition.

[glennbech]

Hi,

@Lesliec. Thanks. I am planning to use it to compute some totals for family "healthy" recipes. I am thinking of building a "meal planner" into it, where you can see the

combined nutrients for a meal, and save favorites. I guess it's right now, more useful for people on diets than foodies :-)

@ChrisZ. I'd love to include Allergy info. I have actually tried to search around a bit for sources with data in a suitable format. I guess I'd need a link between some allergy info and the food #id

from the USDA database.

[Andrew]

Are you planning to issue an iphone version?

Andrew

[glennbech]

Sorry Andrew, I only know Android development. Maybe in the very far future :-)

[catdaddy]

Sounds great. I'll download today and let you know what I think.

We use the "Calorie Counter" website when on our laptop. It's a bit unruly for use on the phone.

[LynnFoodies]

That's great! Thanks for sharing.

It works well on Android tab too, looking forward to see the iPhone version

[glennbech]

Thanks LynnFoodies. I'm planning to upgrade the user experience on 10" tablets, but have iPhone version in the making. Just let me know if there is anything not working; or something that should work better.

Edited August 2, 2012 by glennbech (log)

[minas6907]

I just downloaded this, it looks interesting. One thing though, why would there be no sugars in Halvah? That stuffs loaded

Sent from my DROID X2 using Tapatalk 2

[rancho_gordo]

I just downloaded it and it looks great for the new Google 7inch Nexus.

I have a feeling it's going to be very handy.

Thanks

[glennbech]

@Rancho - Thanks for testing it out . I tested it on the 7" Kindle fire during development, so that screen size should be covered. I does not look good on the 10" though. (yet).

@minas; Interesting. There seems to be carbs missing. 60g of carbs, 0g sugar and 4,5g of fiber. Have to look into that. I isn't by any means alcohol in it?

[minas6907]

Nope, no alcohol, just sesame and sugar, along with different variations

Sent from my DROID X2 using Tapatalk 2

[glennbech]

By the way; A few questions from the developer; Answers very welcome.

1) How well is the metric system integrated into US cooking/nutrition labelling nowdays? Since I'm from Europe, and was unsure, I added values in ounces just to be sure.

2) The data source, from the USDA, is very very detailed. As an example; it lists 10+ items for Beef Brisket, with abbreviations like "Beef, brisket, flat half,ln & Fat, 1/8" Fat, sel, ckd, brsd." Is this something that people would normally understand?

[Smithy]

By the way; A few questions from the developer; Answers very welcome.

1) How well is the metric system integrated into US cooking/nutrition labelling nowdays? Since I'm from Europe, and was unsure, I added values in ounces just to be sure.

2) The data source, from the USDA, is very very detailed. As an example; it lists 10+ items for Beef Brisket, with abbreviations like "Beef, brisket, flat half,ln & Fat, 1/8" Fat, sel, ckd, brsd." Is this something that people would normally understand?

1) From what I've seen, the standard Nutrition Information Label on products sold here provides portion size in English volumetric or weight - as in "cups", "tbsp" or "oz" and then gives the metric equivalent in grams. Thereafter, the component information (fat, carbs, protein and so on) is given in metric units - g and mg.

2) That seems like a specialized level of detail. Nutritionists might care to that level, but I wonder how many others would. I myself find it mildly interesting from a laboratory perspective (how did they get these numbers) and too fussy to be useful...but I am neither nutritionist nor food scientist.

[Smithy]

I've been playing with the app a bit this morning, and have some comments and questions.

Further to your Question #2 above: I still can't say how many other people would be interested, but now that I've pIayed with it I find the information very useful. I tend to cook from scratch, so it's useful to me to see how different treatments of an ingredient affect the nutritional value. (If you find information for "eggplant, roasted, drained" and "eggplant, roasted, undrained" - however they would be abbreviated - please add it!)

I *love* the "weight" feature that automatically scales the portion size as I request.

"Zink" is misspelled; in English it's "Zinc".

It's unfortunate but explained why the breakdown of calories from fat, carbs, protein don't necessarily add up. However, I don't understand why the units listed are kcal. Aren't those the same as Calories?

I think I'll be using this a lot. By the way, I'm using a 10" ASUS tablet and it looks great.

Edited to add: on the cover page that features asparagus, the title word "Asparagus" is missing the second 'a'. I like the look of those photos and quick summaries of featured foods.

Edited August 10, 2012 by Smithy (log)

[glennbech]

I've been playing with the app a bit this morning, and have some comments and questions.

Further to your Question #2 above: I still can't say how many other people would be interested, but now that I've pIayed with it I find the information very useful. I tend to cook from scratch, so it's useful to me to see how different treatments of an ingredient affect the nutritional value. (If you find information for "eggplant, roasted, drained" and "eggplant, roasted, undrained" - however they would be abbreviated - please add it!)

I *love* the "weight" feature that automatically scales the portion size as I request.

"Zink" is misspelled; in English it's "Zinc".

It's unfortunate but explained why the breakdown of calories from fat, carbs, protein don't necessarily add up. However, I don't understand why the units listed are kcal. Aren't those the same as Calories?

I think I'll be using this a lot. By the way, I'm using a 10" ASUS tablet and it looks great.

Edited to add: on the cover page that features asparagus, the title word "Asparagus" is missing the second 'a'. I like the look of those photos and quick summaries of featured foods.

First of all; thanks a lot for spending time with the application. I am sorry to say that "Eggplant Roasted" is not in the database :-)

I will fix the spellings & kcal->calories for the next release. I see that it is confusing to list the "total" in calories and the breakdown in kcal.

On the 10" there is some stretching of the images that I do not like, So I plan on making a special layout for the larger tablets. I test it on my samsung galaxy tab 10, just to check.

The USDA has a special database for retention values that shows how nutrients if different foods are affected by boiling, fryinig etc.I was tempted to include the data, but the application would have

become even larger, I also think the data is very "special interest" :-)

Again; thanks for using it, just post a message in this thread with any suggestions.