MyFitnessPal Paywalls Barcode Scanner That Made Counting Calories Easy (theverge.com) 62
The popular nutrition and weight loss app MyFitnessPal is moving its free barcode scanning feature behind the paywall. The Verge reports: For years, users with free accounts have been able to use this tool to scan food barcodes for easy logging and tracking of daily calorie intake, but the company recently announced that beginning October 1st, a premium account will be required. MyFitnessPal's daily calorie counting is a key component of the app, with the barcode scanner offering a shortcut to finding nutritional value for a specific food item in the app's vast database of food. Much of that database is user-generated, with both free and premium users able to add any food by entering the nutrition facts and barcode off a label. Once October 1st rolls around, free users will still be able to search the database for their food entries, but the barcode scanner will cost $19.99 per month or $79.99 for an annual plan, along with other premium features. And any new users that create a free account on or after September 1st will be shut out from scanning barcodes even earlier unless they pay. "By losing the barcode scanner, MyFitnessPal is doing its users an egregious disservice," writes The Verge's Antonio G. Di Benedetto. "Losing weight and being cognizant of what you eat is hard enough."
"MyFitnessPal is obviously looking to maximize profits, but if the popular r/loseit subreddit is any indication, many users may consider switching to competing apps like Cronometer, Loseit, or Macros over this loss."
"MyFitnessPal is obviously looking to maximize profits, but if the popular r/loseit subreddit is any indication, many users may consider switching to competing apps like Cronometer, Loseit, or Macros over this loss."
Alternative: LoseIt (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally I prefer the LoseIt [loseit.com] scanner. It doesn't seem to have the same size of database of MFP for barcodes, but it has fairly good OCR to read directly from the nutrition label (and it isn't a premium feature).
They should try the new Meta calorie app (Score:3)
which will hit the market soon.
It is also in the metaverse so you can directly report your diet achievments to Mark.
I demand free stuff! (Score:5, Insightful)
Company provides free service with search engine and barcode reading app for years.
Decides they don't want to go out of business supporting free shit.
Keeps user generated database free but charges for app they spent money to build and maintain. Plus all the staff and backend to keep everything running.
Ok, so switch to another service. You're not entitled to use anyone's staff and hardware for free.
Just stop whining or shell out a few bucks if it's so damned important. Cheap asses.
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They squeezed n number of companies from the market and established a monopoly; now they are taking advantage of that. No different than semiconductor dumping.
Re:I demand free stuff! (Score:4, Informative)
It's not a monopoly. TFA lists several alternatives people can switch to.
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How practical is switching? In GDPR countries they have to give you your data on demand, but can it be imported to other apps? Or are they using incompatibility to try to force free users to pay?
Switching (Score:2)
You stop using one app and start using another. You probably loose history or something, but if the goal is to loose weight, you enter in your current weight and target weights and go from there.
My wife switched running apps. It took about two minutes to sign up for the new one.
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If the goal is to lose weight, counting calories on its own may be detrimental. Choose better food choices and balanced choices, not just those with less calories, and exercise more. This turns into an obsession, which turns into a dieting disorder, whereas having a little bit of fat is not a bad thing. If you're overweight enough that losing it is necessar for better health, then counting calories one by one doesn't help very much compared to just making better food choices, and the calorie counting back
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It's not a monopoly. TFA lists several alternatives people can switch to.
Except my fitness tracking watch only supports the one app. So, you're not wrong, but it is an oligopoly. I seem to recall a number of other watches software being similar too.
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You bought a shitty fitness tracker.
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A monopoly is only partially defined by the presence of an alternative. Market power still exists in especially when a service is tied to hardware.
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"Monopoly" gets thrown around so much these days that it barely has any meaning anymore.
No, just because a company is large doesn't mean its a monopoly.
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Yeah. God forbid people pay a few bucks a month for a service they find valuable and useful. I mean, what kind of shit is that?
Re:I demand free stuff! (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with the sentiment but going from 0 to $20 a month was a mistake. If they went to $1.99 with a "sorry but we need it to keep the light on" message, no one would care. Well no one reasonable. I bet if they made it $20 a year (Save $4!) they would make more money than they will at $20 a month.
Re:I demand free stuff! (Score:4, Interesting)
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I think people are most irritated by the fact that their database (the actual hard work) is user-generated, and paying 20 bucks a month for what amounts to a barcode scanner (of which there are hundreds free in any app store) is outrageous.
This company is not asking 20 bucks a month for their work or for actual costs they sustain. They are simply trying to gate in data their users gathered for free for them, counting that there will be enough lazy rich people to establish a sufficient revenue stream.
Conside
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counting that there will be enough lazy rich people to establish a sufficient revenue stream
You could make an argument that it's much more insidious than that. Tracking calories and losing weight is hard in today's world of abundant junk food. People get into all sorts of very negative emotional states from "failing" at this task. MFP (IIRC) already puts in ads that say something like "premium subscribers are X% more likely to stick with their plan". By moving features out of the free tier, they are essentially blackmailing vulnerable people by increasing the pressure that says "unless you pay us,
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Or stop counting calories. It's a fad, and a lot of dieticians feel it does not lead to better health.
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I'm sorry, but counting calories isn't "a fad," it's science. Even if you're not personally counting calories (e.g., you're working with a dietitian), that dietitian has "counted the calories" within their prescribed meal plan, which is part of how you re-composition the body. Maybe I'm being pedantic because you didn't mean that it's a fad that way, but I felt the need to address that.
Source? (Score:5, Interesting)
Their barcode data is USER GENERATED CONTENT that they acquired over years and are now trying to monetize.
Paywalling UGC is the ultimate dick move.
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They haven't blocked access to the database of UGC. They have simply decided that one of the methods you could use to search the database now requires a subscription. The other method (searching manually) is still free.
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Still, though. 20 bucks a month so you can search by an arbitrary field in the DB?
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It's not just that tho'. There are other things you get for the premium sub (e.g. no ads).
You could make the argument that they should have greater granularity in the subscriptions... but is the hassle of loads of different subscriptions worth it for them?
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If they have not blocked access to UGC, it this available for download? Setting up a barcode scanner app is pretty simple, connecting it to a pre-existing database is too, so anyone could set up a competing app. The hard work was the database, everything else is a few days' work.
How to shit on the public's goodwill (Score:2)
If we ever wonder why it seems the public gets more jaded by the year, these kinds of paper cuts are one of them (Yes, there's plenty more that I am just sure everyone is chomping at the bit to point out, but for sake of brevity I'm just focusing on this single one). CDDB was built on the back of user contributions only to have it disappear behind Gracenote's paywall, as an example. Every single calorie value entered into MyFitnessPal was done so by users and over the years they've slowly pulled each piec
Gadgets are more for sales, than for weight loss (Score:2)
May I take liberty to point to the Katie Kookaburra channel on Youtube, as an real world example how calorie counting and fitness gadgets are not essential in weight loss as much, as your fundamental choice of food for consumption, plus sufficient leisure (or work) physical activity.
Could second this with my personal example of leaning towards Mediterranean diet and daily cycling as a main mean of moving trough the city. No gadget needed. Meat, fish, diary produce, good olive oil included, garden fruit inst
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On the other hand, calorie-counting allows you much greater flexibility in your diet, while assuring that you are staying on track with your weight goals. Mind you, when I was dieting and counting calories, I didn't need an app either, but anything that makes following a diet even easier is a good thing.
The bad part about this is that the app maker gathered most of the info from user-submitted data while the feature was free, and are now charging for that same data that the users provided them for free. Pr
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Well, gadget maker was providing free service for a certain while, which compensates submissions. Products' data still will have to be maintained due to changes, new products, is not rock solid for long. It might be, that former model turned to be not as sustainable business-wise, if maker takes such defining step. Low price on gadgets themselves may be strategic decision to be competitive in former or future business model.
As to calorie-counting, I firmly believe, that fundamental relationship of a person
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Turning many a person into the sort of industrially grown cattle, for which obesity is new norm, just buy more
There's a lot of truth in this. And the rabbit hole goes deeper, because the same industrial complex that sells the problem also tries to sell "cures" for the problem (products like Soylent, for example - and many "diet" products that are arguably even worse, in a holistic body health sense, than the full-fat products they are intended to replace).
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I don't think doctors are prescribing calorie limits, instead this comes from social media, self-appointed online nutritionists, and celebrities. Ignore that, instead talk to your doctor. If you don't need to lose weight for health reasons, then there's no point in counting calories at all - and yet these apps are being used by perfectly healthy people to meet a societal body image, which is not healthy. Better to just pay attention to what you eat, have a varied and balanced diet, shove in some daily ex
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Totally agree. I'm 6'1" and only dieted when I hit 95 Kg (210 lbs). I very casually calorie-counted until I was down to 85 Kg (190 lbs). Should take off at least 5 more Kg, but by simply eating smaller portions I have maintained at my current weight for a few years, so not feeling a lot of pressure to lose my daddy gut.
At the end of the day, it's pure maths (Score:2)
If you don't track your input and output of kcal, how do you know if your choice of food is correct or if you're doing enough physical activity to balance it out? At the end of the day it's all about maths and if you don't track the numbers, it's just wishful thinking.
This is even more true if you take into account the fact that people heavily underestimate how many kcal are in the food they eat.
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This thread started from recommending Katie Kookaburra channel on Youtube, proof better exhibited, than my own. Both her and my own experience shows, that it is about better balance, not math (no plural available), nor tracking. Pick her records on food, and you should get an idea what it consists of. FWIW, I think she is on intense side of cycling, even doesn't have to, while less of, but regular, engagement works the same for myself. I could pick another example of exactly 6 minutes spent daily with devic
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The computation is not simply that reducing your calorie intake while still exercising for the same number of minutes will cause you to lose weight. There's all kinds of other factors.
- Your body does not extract every calorie from everything you eat.
- Reducing your food in
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- I don't follow any particular diet but rather eat what I used to eat before starting my weight loss programme, just less.
- In general though, I eat mostly healthy food, mostly home-cooked so that I can weight and measure every ingredient. Meat and mixed veg in nearly every meal, in various incarnations (bakes, casseroles, slow-cooked dishes, curries, lots mediterranean, etc).
- I use a meal planner, which is built into my app, to plan meals for the week ahead, ensuring that every day is balanced as much as
Time to... (Score:2)
...fire the dumbass in marketing that thought this was a good idea.
new hires (Score:2)
The new bean counting people recently got hired to work at MyFitnessPal after their last job at Google, where they decided it was a good idea for long-time Google users to start paying for Google Workspace accounts for their personally-owned domains, never-mind what was agreed to in the first place well over a decade ago and Google's overall operational costs vs profits. But I get it a hardware (underwear) company bought MyFitnessPal and has opted to Think Different[sic], (tm).
Facebook is (still!) free for
Gonna piss people off ! (Score:2)
I'm so smug now tthat I wrote my own app. (Score:2)
I decided to try and lose some weight earlier this year. Naturally, I needed an app to track my (kilo)calories. Since paying someone regular money for basic features sounded like a dumb idea, I wrote my app instead, and I am so smug now that I did. Yes, it did take some time to initially populate the database of food I eat but you don't need a database which contains all the food in the world, just the food you personally consume. Now, I've got an app which allows me to record my calories, scan products, ad
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Thanks for a completely random piece of gym wisdom! I know my gym stuff, thanks. ;-) I've also lost 14kg since the beginning of the year (with 6 more kg to go planned this year) so my exercise + kcal tracking is definitely working.
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If you "know your gym stuff" why didn't you include your height weight and lifts (squat, press, dead)? Where did you start your NLP?
Well, that escalated quickly and for no apparent reason.
There are a lot of us who still care about weight and/or tracking calories beyond functional fitness or purely having sufficient lean muscle mass to prevent osteopenia. Some have struggled with body fat in the past, struggled with eating disorders, have hormonal issues interfere with hunger and satiety signals, take medications that do the same, etc. Or even actors who need to rapidly change body composition for a role.
Personally, I have a hell of a sw
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I am very critical of most things "fitness" related as there always tends to be more marketing than substance.
As you have very eloquently pointed out, there are man
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Why do you "naturally" need an app? Counting calories can be detrimental to losing weight at times especially when used by itself (does it take into account your exercise or metabolism?).. Consult with your doctor, don't consult with an app. Almost all fad diets fail and people end up with weight cycling up and down, and calorie counting can lead to people obsessing over the numbers and feeling like they can't meet society's goals, and that can lead to diet disorders. You can eat less without counting,
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You assumed that I follow a fad diets. I don't. I built this app to keep a precise log of what I eat so that I can analyse my eating habits and identify foods which are unhealthy, generally not in my favour and to make better decisions as to what to eat.
Yes, the app takes into account exercise, my individual body composition (lean body mass vs fat vs all the rest) and actually applies a correction based on my previous "performance" being a constant reflecting how my body responds to exercise, food comsumpti
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I wrote my app instead...with no surprise changes to the UI/functionality overnight.
No surprise changes until the next iOS or Android update, anyways :)
Congratulations on your successes!
I've been very happy using MacroFactor (jumped ship from MFP earlier this year), but I was just thinking about trying to write a rep counter for lifting. I always forget how many reps I've done halfway through a longer set, and I can't work to failure without losing count either.
Data set is not reliable anyways... (Score:1)
At first when I read this story, I figured the cost was to
No big deal for slashdotters (Score:2)
branded foods database [usda.gov]
nutrient value of foods database [usda.gov]
With these two databases you can get the same data. Any slashdotter ought to be able to figure that out, right? I think I still have around here someplace a drupal instance into which I once imported the latter of those databases, and managed to display the nutrient data without writing any code, just installing some modules. Maybe I'll take a stab at doing that a little later. I just recently installed a fresh drupal instance to see how much work it wou
One problem with just using another app is the VA (Score:3)
Pay money to give yourself osteopenia (Score:2)
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MFP can be used for GAINING as well as losing. That's what I primarily use it for. It's handy to have an app to make sure I get enough total Calories and enough protein to support those gains in a healthy way.
That said, the loss of the scanning convenience and the steep monthly cost might move me to try one of the alternatives.
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Start with talking to your doctor. If the doctor thinks your weight is fine then good, don't bother with calorie counting. If the doctor recommends losing weight, then follow the doctor's advice on how to do that, not the internet and not apps. Generally a doctor advises guidelines, not a hard and fast number, unless there's a specific metabolic issue to be addressed that no app is going to deal with. The apps are only there to cash in on the body-image obsession; first world problems.
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How effective can this approach be? (Score:2)
If your diet is such that this vaguely works, you probably have a poor diet anyway. You may manage the calories, but nutrition wise you probably still have a problem.
Single serving foods with consistent barcodes (UPC) likely mean eating a can of something or a frozen dinner or something like that. Things used more as "ingredients" would be uniquely labeled (specific weight or count of ingredient), portioned out a bit at a time, combined with other ingredients that then get portioned out among a group. Fur
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Actually, what you tend to do is scan the barcode of the individual ingredients, then tell the app how much of that you used.
So, for example, if you're making a peanut butter smoothie, you'd scan the yoghurt, and tell it you're using, say, 1/2 a cup. Scan the PB, and tell it you're using a tablespoon. Scan the cocoa powder, and tell it you're using a teaspoon. Tell it you're using a single banana; weigh that with a kitchen scale if you want, or just estimate a standard size.
Build up your catalog of 'stan