Bitesnap

Consumer and social

food logging

SHOW HN2017

174points
108comments
#203of 2,242 in 2017
Top 10%of 2017 by points

How HN took it

CuriousMostly questions and neutral comments

26 positive, 55 neutral or asking, 6 mixed, 10 critical, out of 97 comments about the project. Thread score +0.22.

Idea: 14 for, 2 againstExecution: 7 for, 5 againstPerformance: 1 for, 3 againstDesign: 1 for, 0 againstPricing: 1 for, 0 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Slick, intuitive interface and onboarding

    From 3 comments
    • A few thoughts: - Very slick onboarding experience, especially compared to other calorie counters. Big plus here. - There doesn't appear to be a way to add food outside of the…
      wkirby on HN
    • I just logged a couple of meals with it - really like the slick interface - it's very intuitive. One of the main things preventing me from using other services is how clunky /…
      wmblaettler on HN
    • I've been using it all day and have the following feedback. 1. I like the design, and it works very cleanly. Nothing appears to be heavy, and the UI is intuitive. 2. It only does…
      AndrewKemendo on HN
  • Recognition works well on many foods

    From 3 comments
    • I took a picture of my finished Styrofoam hot chocolate cup and straw. Hot chocolate was the first guess. It gave an option for "from mix water added", done. Very cool. Edit:…
      JTxt on HN
    • Very nice! About 10 years ago I created a cooking web site that also uses the USDA nutrition database (cookingspace.com) and I just recently started working on free iOS and…
      mark_l_watson on HN
    • Awesome, I've just tried it with an Apple and it worked! Can you let me enter my height and weight in metric please as I had to use Google to convert.
      aembleton on HN

Objections

  • Portion size and hidden ingredients are not estimated well

    From 2 comments
    • > How does it handle differentiating different types of bread, which have differing carbs? We don’t nail everything yet but we allow users to refine the predictions. So in your…
      vinayan3 on HN
    • Predicting portion size is something we’re actively looking into. One of the reasons for getting Bitesnap out to a larger audience now is to be able to collect more training data…
      vinayan3 on HN
  • Taking photos is slower than picking from a list

    From 1 comment
    • Looks neat, but at the same time, really cumbersome. Because it looks neat, I'd guess people will try it, because it will be cumbersome, people will abandon it. So like many of…
      MintsJohn on HN
  • Only imperial units and US-only availability

    From 2 comments
    • We’re initially targeting the US market, and it was easiest to get serving data in imperial units to start. We are planning to add sensible serving sizes in metric units as soon…
      vinayan3 on HN
    • Thank you for trying the app and the feedback. We will add metric units for entering your details.
      vinayan3 on HN

Requests

  • Metric units

    From 2 comments
    • Thank you for trying the app and the feedback. We will add metric units for entering your details.
      vinayan3 on HN
    • We’re initially targeting the US market, and it was easiest to get serving data in imperial units to start. We are planning to add sensible serving sizes in metric units as soon…
      vinayan3 on HN
  • Availability in more countries' app stores

    From 4 comments
    • Can you make this available on other countries' stores as well? Specifically I'd love to see it on the German iOS AppStore.
      lsinger on HN
    • App Store telling me the app is not currently available in Australia. I'm guessing there is nothing specifically US centric in the app, any chance of opening up region support…
      evolve2k on HN
    • I'd love to switch to using this full time but why isn't available in my country (Pakistan)? I currently use Lifesum to track what I eat.
      amingilani on HN
    • Unavailable in Australia. Weird, because this is the one way of logging food that doesn't differ between countries.
      ClassyJacket on HN
  • MyFitnessPal integration or data export/API

    From 2 comments
    • If this has MyFitnessPal integration I'll start using it immediately. Would be great to supplement my tracking when I go out to eat. Your guess is as good as mine, hopefully…
      Swizec on HN
    • Is there an API? Can I export my data? I'd be interested in using this if I can get the data out. I've been posting everything I eat and drink to my own website for the past few…
      aaronpk on HN
  • Barcode scanning and nutrition label OCR

    From 2 comments
    • Great start for a product. I would imagine everything that's currently in your food database had to be manually chosen due to the availability of training data. It doesn't handle…
      bmcooley on HN
    • Love this for prepared meals and home cooked meals, where you need to analyze the ingredients of a dish. Have you considered adding the ability to recognize a standard FDA…
      wmblaettler on HN
  • Saved meals for one-click logging

    From 1 comment
    • My goodness, I just started trying to use MyFitnessPal to track my food intake and was wishing that something like this existed. Is there a way to save prior entries as meals? I…
      aesthetics1 on HN

Questions

  • How does it handle bread types and hidden fats?

    From 1 comment
    • I found your blog post (the learn more button) but I'd love more info on this if it's available somewhere. How does it handle differentiating different types of bread, which have…
      jc4p on HN
  • What training dataset was used?

    From 1 comment
  • Does it estimate portion size and distance?

    From 1 comment
    • When I read this: "We saw an opportunity to apply recent advances in image recognition to simplify the food logging process" do they mean CNN's for image classification and/or…
      fsiefken on HN

Alternatives named

  • MyFitnessPal

    From 2 comments
    • I wouldn't use this. It's not that I don't think your calorie count might be right for some cases, but it won't get everything right, and when you're trying to lose/gain weight,…
      AznHisoka on HN
    • My goodness, I just started trying to use MyFitnessPal to track my food intake and was wishing that something like this existed. Is there a way to save prior entries as meals? I…
      aesthetics1 on HN
  • Lose It

    From 1 comment
    • A few thoughts: - Very slick onboarding experience, especially compared to other calorie counters. Big plus here. - There doesn't appear to be a way to add food outside of the…
      wkirby on HN
  • Lifesum

    From 1 comment
    • I'd love to switch to using this full time but why isn't available in my country (Pakistan)? I currently use Lifesum to track what I eat.
      amingilani on HN
  • Weight Watchers

    From 1 comment
    • Just downloaded it, the app is really elegant. Really nice work. I have used weight watchers in the past, so here are a few thoughts: 1. Its not totally clear to me what the goal…
      ttcbj on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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