At common chain restaurants, the average meal contains 64% of a persons recommended calories for the day. Its just as easy to overdo it on salt. And since people tend to eat whatever huge portion is served to them, its no surprise that eating out causes restaurant patrons to eat more than they should. MyFitnessPal, a calorie-tracking and fitness app with over 65 million users, tapped into its database to see just how bad the problem can get. The company compared nutritional data from users over the past year when they logged recipes, to days when they didnt (many chain restaurants have nutritional data available within MyFitnessPal, so users can select a meal instead of creating a recipe for a home-made meal). The result: on days when users didnt log recipes, they were over six times more likely to go over their calorie, carb and fat goals, and seven times more likely to exceed their sodium goals. Its not that people dont realize that home cooking is generally easier to micromanage for portion control. In a survey of 2,800 users by MyFitnessPal, 99% of respondents said that they believe home cooking is healthier. But only half of respondent cook four times a week or more. Weve compiled an entirely unscientific list of reasons why you—and everyone else—are fat, including: bad urban planning, diet soda, driving, your mom, your job, your fork, your genes, your neighborhood, your eating schedule, your eating habits, pesticides, and even your lack of pot smoking. In the past, MyFitnessPal hasnt really helped the cooking cause. The process to enter a recipe into system is really kloogy. You have to log each ingredient, and tell the portion size for each one, says CEO Mike Lee. This week, thats changing (hence the release of user recipe data). The platforms new recipe tool has an algorithm that will parse any recipe found online, pull out the ingredient and portioning list, and match that to ingredients in its database. We’re seeing a massive number of recipes, and a massive number of users interacting with recipes. Were using their feedback to tell us what they are interpreting as a handful of almonds, and which item [in the MyFitnessPal database] is the best match for an ingredient description, says Lee. To kick off the recipe tool launch, MyFitnessPal is releasing two free cookbooks featuring low-calorie recipes, available here.
Posted on: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 01:15:00 +0000
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