Jun 252014
 

I am planning on visiting a nutritionist and want to keep a food diary in advance to get my money's worth from the visit. I decided the handiest way of keeping one is using my android phone.

I did a search and found a lifehacker post about the Five Best Food and Nutrition Tracking Tools. Lifehacker is one of my favourite sites so I started with this post.

I installed the MyFitnessPal App, voted #1 (2,293 votes), straight way the focus on this one was calorie counting, which I am not currently looking at, so wanting something simpler I uninstalled that. The #2 App LoseIt from the name didn't have the focus I was looking for.

Next up was SparkPeople. The App started off with some setup questions about weight and I selected an option to maintain weight. I went to log my breakfast and while it listed porridge I didn't seem to be able to toppings easily. I emailed support and they replied with some information about their food database but did not answer my questions specifically, which was reason enough for me not to use the App. Their subsequent newsletter was very heavy with info and ads for my taste also.

I moved onto the next hit in google for "food diary android app", Food Diary by Geoff Holden. The description included "Export in CSV…for processing, archiving, or printing to bring to a doctor or dietitian". Sounded exactly what I was looking for. I paid the €0.80 and downloaded.

On first look I was impressed. It allows you to add items with a time stamp. As well as categorising items as food it gives an option to categorise as activity. I hadn't considered this but it made sense to me to log exercise while I was at it.

Food Diary screenshots.jpg

I contacted the author about the use case of keeping a separate diary for a child and being able to share this between multiple phones. The author responded saying these were features he was considering & investigating – perfect.

When adding new items it matches previous entries and allows you to pick them. Very useful app if you are looking for something like this.