show number of nutrients when adding food + return to search ➞ save tons of time!

Lolinda

When adding a new food to the diary, I search for example for "jalap pickl". I get dozens of entries.
PROBLEM 1: almost all food entries are valueless, providing some three nutrients (salt, water, fibre). Then after losing a lot of time, I finally find a food entry that actually has a meaningful amount of nutrient data (vitamin C, vitamin A, etc). This lengthly search process could work in an instant if the search view (see attached image) would have an additional column: number of nutrients. Thus it would be immediately visible, where that single food entry is that actually has any nutrient data.
PROBLEM 2: In all this process, I have to enter the search term ("jalap pickl") dozens of times again and again. Would be just wonderful to be able to return to the search instead of searching new and new again. Or have I missed something? Thanks so much in advance!!

BENEFIT:
I spent 10 min on adding a single food (jalapeno pickles) that I did not eat before. If the above improvements would be in place, it would work in max 1 min! Guess what the most frequently heard complaint is why my friends do not use Crono inspite of everyone saying it is amazing? Because it costs way too much time!

Screenshot:
Please please tell me how on earth to do something as simple as adding an image to this post?? I clicked the picture icon in the menu line above. Instead of uploading, it asked me a URL. OK, I created a publicly accessible URL in google drive. Entered it. It does not do anything. Repeated all this process on Android/Opera, repeated all this on Mac/Opera, repeated all this on Mac/Chrome. Nothing works. Here is the link to the image:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TZT3zWU8tRLHuY50532GWYNpSrisgR92/view
@Karen_Cronometer , if you have a minute, could you please help me out by adding this image properly? I just failed.

Karen_Cronometer

Hi Lolinda,

Finding room for the number of listed nutrients in the food search would be a great way to quickly see which foods would be the best option to add to your diary!

When you are doing a food search, you can click on a food to view more information in the Add Serving dialog:

I highlighted where you can find the number of listed nutrients for the selected food.

You can select a different food from the list above to see the same information for that food - I hope that will save you some time re-typing the name of the food you are looking for (sorry if I misunderstood your work flow).

We developed the search tabs to help you narrow down your search results as well. Using the Common Foods tab will limit your search results to our databases with the most nutrition. I would recommend trying this tab first if you are looking to get the most nutrition info. These databases contain mostly whole foods and generic versions of your brand name products, so if you don't find the food you are looking for, try a more generic name for your food, for example, USDA and NCCDB don't have pickled jalapenos, but there is a food called "Peppers, hot pickled, canned" that would provide a robust nutrient profile.

Best,

Lolinda

Thanks for your quick answer. I tried it and it did not work:
1. I entered "jalap pickl" into "add food"
2. selected the first entry: "Old el Paso, jalapeno peppers"
3. just as you nicely showed me in your screenshot, it told me it has 20 nutrients. Looks good! This has data!
4. I followed the 20 nutrient link and it nicely took me to https://cronometer.com/#foods
5. Failure 1: It was all in vain: there were not any 20 nutrients but it was just the usual few (fiber, sodium). The rest was padded with 0. Now I became aware that I saw this many times: foods in Crono padded with obviously incorrect zero values, thus pretending that there are lots of nutrient data where there are none.
6. Failure 2: Worse, now I tried to navigate back to the list of foods in the "add food" dialogue where I was. This was not possible, whatever I tried: I tried pressing the back button. I tried going from the food menu to the diary menu. In both cases I landed in the diary without the add food dialogue being open (let alone the food list)
7. So I am again to repeat the whole process: heading to "add food", enter the search term again, select the next candidate............. I feel here some software development would be beneficial, or what do you think?

Lolinda

Btw thanks for your hint about "Peppers, hot pickled, canned". This indeed looks like a good choice! But I would never have found it w/o your help because I wouldn't have had the idea that I have to abandon all my search for pickled jalapenos because all the data in Crono is rather poor (not your fault but fault of the databases...). On my own, I found "Jalapenos Green Pickled Jalapeno Pepeprs". Apart from the small spelling mistake, it has some more nutrients than the rest of pickled jalapenos., but still much less than your hint.

➞ All in all, I feel that this is a problem area in Crono where a common need is not resolved: find a food that has a "robust nutrient profile" and is reasonably close to what I actually ate, without losing lots of time...

Karen_Cronometer

Hi Lolinda,

You are right - clicking the # of nutrients listed will take you out of your food search to the Foods tab. You can also check the nutrient profile of foods directly in the Foods tab, using the Search Food too:

Cronometer distinguishes between a zero value and no value. If there is a zero, this means the value is known to be zero (for analyzed foods), or in the case of packaged products it has none or a low value and the company has rounded it down to zero.
A nutrient which has no value listed means that the value is unknown.

If your priority is to get the most complete nutrition information we always recommend searching for the closest generic equivalent of the food in the Common Foods tab. Starting in this tab will save you a lot of time! These databases have much more comprehensive nutrition information than you will find for branded food products. Learn more about this here: https://cronometer.com/blog/6-tips-getting-nutrition-data/

All the best,

Lolinda

Indeed, Crono should distinguish between zero and no value. Now that I looked at the number of nutrients, I became aware that often it does not. Take for example these two foods:

• Jalapenos Green Pickled Jalapeno Peppers
• Old El Paso, jalapeno peppers, pickled, canned, sliced

Looking at values such as vitamin C and vitamin A in both foods, it becomes clear that one of these foods is incorrect. My bet is that the zero values in "Old El Paso, jalapeno peppers, pickled, canned, sliced" are incorrect. Now that I looked at this, I became aware that I have seen this so many times: foods padded with obviously incorrect zero values. - In which case, unfortunately, Crono does not correctly distingcish between zero and no value...

Lolinda

A question: you upload images to this forum. I am unable to do so, whatever I have tried so far. Do you have any trick how this works? Maybe you know a browser on Mac or on Android that does it correctly? (I have no Windows and no iPhone). Thanks!!

Lolinda

Hey @Karen_Cronometer I have a very simple suggestion how to streamline all this workflow of finding foods that have much data and are reasonably close to what I have eaten. It needs a tiny tiny software development: as little as enable longpress (rightclick) on the number of nutrients. What do you think, would that be ok to ask for?
Let me explain why this would help:
You showed me the first step: to always check the number of nutrients in the add food dialogue. But then, one still wants to verify what is actually in it. Let that be to avoid the "padded with incorrect zeros" issue as reported above, or, more generally,Just to see what I get. Now this is the troublesome step. If I just click on the number of nutrients link then I fall out of the add food dialogue. Here comes in the right-click (or longpress on Android) that shows me all the details on the next tab.
➞ this would result in a smooth workflow.

Thanks for considering.
(and showing the number of nutrients in the table of all the search hits right beneath each food would be wonderful, too, as discussed above)

Karen_Cronometer

@Lolinda there is another thread here discussion how to upload images to the forum: https://forums.cronometer.com/discussion/comment/5728#Comment_5728

I found inserting a URL from an image I had saved on imgur worked for me (I'm using Chrome)

https://imgur.com/G8g7LRL

Lolinda

Thanks, @Karen_Cronometer - and what do you think about my idea to enable right-click (long-press) as described above? I cannot imagine a smaller software development effort!! So little work! And it would so much streamline this troublesome workflow! Was my description understandable?