Quick add feature

Vadim26

Quick add feature let's you add calories (+other macros: p,f,c) without having to look for specific food name or creating one (if it's non-existent).

It would be very convenient for many people..

What do you guys think?

Hilary

Thanks for the suggestion @Vadim26 . We have considered doing this, and we are aware of other requests however, we are a bit hesitant to add this feature. Cronometer values complete and accurate nutrition data, and offering a quick add calories feature would promote using less accurate, more incomplete data.
Instead (at least currently) I would recommend taking some time to mark some foods as favorites for easy access and also to create some custom recipes for foods you know you'll be eating throughout the week.
If you don't have time to enter your food right away, you could also consider adding a note to Cronometer in lieu of adding foods with a description of what you ate so you can enter it in more detail later.

Vadim26

Hi Hilary,

Thanks, but this isn't an answer I was hoping to get.

Sorry, but you are basically telling you can't add it, because you consider this "unimportant" or some other excuse.

This feature is crucial.

Adding feature wouldn't promote anything at all. I've been using this apps for years and know what I'm talking about, and when the food isn't available on your database (which is poor by the way) - it's a waste of time to through all the hoops and tricks to just add "new food".

I bought a yearly subscription to your app, and was sad to see this feature was missing (while every other app has it). At least 10 of my friends would be using your app if this feature is available. I am influencer in the fitness community and suggest your app to everyone, but no one likes when they find out there's no quick add feature.

Hoping it will get fixed in the next couple weeks-months, otherwise I'll be looking into different apps and possibly leaving negative review.

Fitnesspal has it, but I didn't like their interface. Cronometer is really good, because everything is on 1 screen for you to see.

Thanks, hope it will be fixed.

Hilary

Sorry to hear that @Vadim26,

We certainly take all user requests seriously and we still will take yours under consideration. If there is enough demand we will certainly look into options for this. Cronometer values nutritional accuracy and completeness. I understand the importance of being able to quickly add items to your diary. We are always working to make this easier with every update, and we love getting feedback about how people would like to do this.

We hope to be a platform to gather valuable nutrition information in order to get a complete view of your health.
We are also proud to have a very large database of complete and verified nutrition data. We recommend using our lab analysed listings which can contain over 60 listed macro and micronutrients. Adding incomplete data to your diary can cause inconsistencies in your nutrition tracking.

Cronometer founder, Aaron Davidson wrote a great blog post on the best ways and best sources from which to log your nutrition data. If you're interested you can read it here: https://cronometer.com/blog/6-tips-getting-nutrition-data/

Imriela

The biggest use-case I can see for this for users that there is current no workaround for is if I go out to eat someplace that has nutritional information (chain restaurants), so they have calories (and sometimes even macro info) published and available. However, I have no way at all to input this into Cronometer. Since it's a restaurant, I can't input a recipe, I have nothing to scan, and such. Quick adding would be great in this case.

Hilary, do you have any advice on how to do this in Cronometer in the current state without the quick-add function that I am unaware of or haven't thought of?

Hilary

@Imriela You can create a custom food to do this.
https://cronometer.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360018240312
https://cronometer.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360019866351

Marie_Eve_Cronometer

Hello @Imriela ,

A workaround you could use would be to create custom foods for macros/calories. For example, a custom food called 'Calories' where 1 gram of the food provides 1 calorie which you could use to quick add calories to your diary.

Cheers,
Marie-Eve

pharry

I created a custom food for calories, carbs, fats, protein, etc., each with 1 gram. Then I created a recipe with each of those foods. Now I can add the recipe and explode it and input the amount for each one.

Vadim26

@pharry

Thank you, I've created custom food for each macro, and custom recipe where they all are included.

I am wondering how do you "explode" the recipe when adding it into your daily food?

Hilary

@Vadim26 to explode a recipe, add the recipe to your diary, then swipe that diary entry to the right to access the settings menu (Right click on the web version of Cronometer) to choose Explode Recipe.

Vadim26

Thank you, however I am not able to do it from my phone, which I use all the time for this app

Vadim26

seems like there is no explode feature to QUICKLY change the recipe

Imriela

@Vadim26 Put the recipe food into your diary, then swipe the entry item to the right, click the 3 dots to pull up the options for that entry and tap on "Explode Recipe"

Lector

If there is enough demand we will certainly look into options for this.

There's been so much demand for this feature over the years. Maybe it's hard for the team to see this, because the forum search doesn't surface all the similar threads? See here how many times Quick Add has been requested since 2017:

https://forums.cronometer.com/discussion/4013/forum-search-still-sucks

Cronometer values nutritional accuracy and completeness.

That's great, but impossible to achieve in the case of eating out, and likely irrelevant.

1. If I eat a taco at a food truck, there's absolutely no realistic way to estimate the micronutrients. None. The best I can do is put in some calories and protein, maybe carbs and fat.

2. Micronutrients take months to have any effect, if any; not to mention the huge variability in ingredients. If I miss adding them for one meal per day, the difference will be insignificant. Aiming for nutritional accuracy and completeness in this case is an exercise in futility.

3. Taking a daily multivitamin or Athletic Greens or the like, negates the need to be so concerned about nutritional completeness. But adding calories remains important.

TxBrandi

I use a local food service that provides meal prepping. They also only give the basic nutrition info. If I can't somehow add these meals, then there is almost no reason for me to pay to use this app. My husband and I both do 18 hour fasts every day and both of the meals that we eat are from this food prepping service. Please implement something that will allow this to work where we can add a meal and then add whatever nutrition info that we are given. I understand that you value tracking ALL nutrition info, but sometimes, we just don't have it but want to track what we are able.

Lector

@TxBrandi: wow, 18h daily fasts!

Cronometer already has foods that only have calories, protein, carbs and fat. Just search for Quick Calories, Quick Protein, Quick Carbs, and Quick Fat.

TxBrandi

@Lector - Are you saying you have to individually go into each one of those to add the number of Calories, Protein, Carbs and Fat? I just found the Custom Food area (after I asked the question). To me, that seems easier to enter it all in one place than going to each macro & calories individually (if tha'ts indeed what you are saying. I guess maybe people don't like it because it may not be something they will eat again (I know mine usually aren't as the meals don't repeat). Not too big of a deal when you have time to go delete them.

Lector

I've used Trifecta for a while, and they delivered meals that had only the major nutrition facts listed (cal, prot, carb, fat), and they varied from meal to meal. Defining custom meals wouldn't have helped, so yes, I had to enter the four numbers for each meal.

I'm not sure how this can be made any better, unless the meal delivery service is going to add meal-specific barcodes, and enough of us bother to add these into CRDB.