Fooducate: Nutrition Coach Reviews

by Badkitty_

I downloaded Fooducate because I like the website. But Fooducate immediately began prompting me for personal information. Height, weight, age, etc. I did not fill in any of the information.

I clicked on the word “skip.“ Even though I clicked on “skip,” it still filled in personal information for me that it obtained somewhere ***without my permission.*** The information was accurate and appeared to be coming from the Apple Health app even though I had ***not granted Fooducate access to the Health app.***

I then discovered I was forced to create an account just to view nutritional information on foods. I decided to immediately stop using Fooducate . I guess the developers felt like although they had a good thing going with their website, why not use their app to collect as much personal data as possible, even for people who have no intention of using Fooducate to track calories.

by FrustratedUser1900

The concept is great which is why I ended up buying a one year membership but you either have to cook all your meals (which I often do on weekdays) or buy a meal at a very unhealthy store like McDonalds or taco bell or a packaged frozen dinner (which is very unhealthy and they acknowledge it too) for them to figure out your calorie intake. There is no middle ground. I went out to a Mexican place for lunch today as it’s the weekend and shared a plate of nachos with my friend but there’s no way of estimating my calorie consumption unless I know the portion size of each ingredient unless I am willing to go eat at tacobell. Their grocery list is also very small, most of the healthier brands don’t appear on their database. So I would have to either type in my calorie intake manually or buy a mass produced alternative listed in their database, neither of which sounds appealing to me. If you expect me to use Fooducate everyday for a long time, you should make it super easy to add my consumption and estimate my calorie intake. I am just a week in to my membership and I already regret my purchase.

by Tpuhl17

Loved Fooducate when I started using nearly 8 years ago. 5 star loyal customer. Now, I have way to much food data that clutters up my “recent” foods with no way to delete them. I’ve asked, but still don’t know why users can’t delete foods from their data.

The foods get sorted by snack, breakfast, lunch and dinner based on your meal times determined in your settings. However, it doesn’t take into consideration I might enter my breakfast meal long after I’ve had breakfast. For example, I hate the exact cereal I’ve eaten every day of my life for the last 20 years @ 5:30 am, but never entered into this app until 10:30am. IF, I entered it at my breakfast time settings it would have been at the top of the list. However, since it wasn’t, and it rarely is, I literally scrolled thru 76 food items to get to a food I eat everyday. There were at least a dozen foods I passed I ate months ago for the first time and probably won’t eat again.

No big deal? After awhile doing that countless times day after day searching & “scrolling” foods gets cumbersome, time consuming and very annoying knowing I have no control over the foods I see.

I’ve looked for similar apps to try and jump ship, but so far I haven’t found anything. That’s not a ringing endorsement for this app. I’m actively looking. It might be time to break up.

by Chrisminbrooklyn1980

Sigh. Fooducate is...just not what I wanted. I need to gain weight, and while I love some of the metrics it provides if you want to gain weight there is nothing to help you in Fooducate with this goal. Instead you have to more or less figure it out yourself. Fooducate, unfortunately, is no help to those of us who want to gain weight, and as a result is part of a one-size fits all approach to diet and health, which is that losing weight equals health, which, as an eating disorder survivor, I can tell you is not true. It seems like it would be an easy fix to include other folks here to be more inclusive and I thought maybe I could get that if I purchased the premium features, but for now I’m just really disappointed that I bought the premium version, and hope that the developers will respond before my subscription is up. Ugh.

by Preview Works Better

Fooducate is great. I learn a lot about the food I’m eating. The only peeve I have is that it’s too cumbersome to get to the Food Points section of an item. For example, when adding to the tracker, you have to hit the search button, search for the food, click on “explanations,” lookup the points, then hit the add button. If you’re counting calories, you can go straight to the tracker and add food while seeing the calories per cup at the bottom of the item without all the extra steps. It would be great if you could choose to see the food points quickly at the bottom of those entries as well.

You also can’t see your food points when you look at your food log in review for the day. You can see all your calorie totals, but nothing for the food points.

by TOPW_QOH

Many of the foods I eat are not in the database. Many of the foods that are in the database have the wrong nutrition information also. This has messed up my information, but now that I realize I double check the nutrition label and enter the nutrition information myself. When entering the information Vitamins A and C cannot be included in the nutrition information because there is no place for them. It would be helpful to include vitamins and minerals in the nutrition information. Apple HealthKit does not update when you delete something it remains in there. It would be nice to be able to see the carb count and other nutrition information per meal instead of and/or in addition to the total amount per day. A new day begins at 12:00 EST and ends at 11:59 p.m. EST, but Fooducate does not adhere to this as it remains on the day before calling it today when it is well into the next day. The ability to print a report from “All Time”, 90 days, 1 month, 14 days, and 7 days would be helpful. For privacy Fooducate should allow for a passcode on the iPhone app.

by Chocoloco47

The scanning via camera of foods is awesome, but this needs more details when it comes to food logging. For example, one can only log on a mobile device. The option to log on a desktop would make this process faster. Also, different serving units should be included. For example, one should be able to enter food as units of weight and volume, with both imperial and metric measurements. The amount of food consumed shouldn’t be required to be relative to service size. For example, I had 1/3 of a cup of oatmeal, but I was forced to say how many multiples of 1/4 cup that was. That’s a pain if you care about precision. Finally, the nutrition reports should also include vitamin and mineral reports. This could be particularly useful for vegetarians and others who need to be more vigilant about iron and other nutrients.

by Kittykat12101

Fooducate has one of the most comprehensive food rating system along with a really wide variety of foods which I really like about it, but other than that it’s features are limited. I wish you were able to track steps like you could on Fooducate I was using before this because most of my exercise I get from walking and it’s hard to do the math for how many calories I’ve burned without knowing. Additionally it’s super frustrating that the main measurement used in logging food is ounces. If I measure myself out a half a cup of carrots I have no clue how many ounces that is because I don’t have a food scale! Because of this I have to go back and forth between different apps to get the basic features I need but keep the insight that Fooducate gives which could honestly be easily solved by just adding more features. I look forward to the day I can give this 5 stars!

by Bewildered1965

this app helps me be more aware of every bite I put in my mouth, because I know I will have to enter it into Fooducate . I like that it also helps me understand more about the quality of ingredients and nutrients I'm consuming. I wish that it had an easy way to know more about a food before adding to my daily intake. I find that I have to add a food first in order to see just how it will affect the daily goals, nutrition info, etc. It would be helpful to me to be able to look at that detailed info as I try to decide what to choose for snacks and meals. The feature may be there, but if it is I haven't found it yet. I've been using Fooducate a little over a week and have lost over a pound, so I'm seeing good results. It reminds me of when I used Weight Watchers points tracking, which also worked well for me. I also like the diet tips, where I have read some interesting information. The notifications are nice to help me remember to log in each meal before I forget what I ate. This is a good solid app. I have also found it worth the extra money to unlock the premium features. I plan to continue using this one!

by Rungirl39

I like that Fooducate allows me to easily track my food intake, which is super helpful when trying to lose weight. I don't necessarily count calories, but instead prefer to eat a moderate amount of whole foods that include a lot of healthy fats. Fooducate holds me accountable so that I don't indulge too much in unhealthy snacks that slowly creep up around my waist line. I make most of my own food so I am happy that they have the "user added" option. The ability to enter in my mood is a great feature as well. Just the act of recording moments of boredom, anger and even my sleep patterns help me to keep my emotions in check, as well as provide a resource for me to review too see if any of my eating habits change my sleep quality or contribute to mood swings. Thanks for the easy to use health tracker!

by Userfrom Austin

I think I found Fooducate before The Most Popular fitness tracker gained so much traction, and tbh Fooducate is still superior. The UI is so easy for me to navigate, it’s affordable, and the database of food has grown so much. I also love the long list of different types of exercise, and even though estimating calories burned is not an exact science, I appreciate any ballpark number of extra calories that I need to eat so I don’t hurt myself. Seriously, I tried these other, more talked about apps, and I just don’t want to quit this one. It’s not freaky and aggressive in its wording about sticking to diets and militant exercise and cult-like branded phrasing, and the orange, yellow, and earth tone colors are more pleasant. I also love that it gives you a flexible target date, so you can also set your goal based on the number of calories you want to eat per day. (I like smaller calorie deficits.) Also, bravo for the warnings about going below 1200 calories! Keep being responsible, please!

EDIT: I just deleted a star because I saw below what data they are collecting. Dude, collect my subscription money. Don’t invade my privacy like this. There is no reason to know my contacts, etc. Also, this shouldn’t be an app for ages 4+. Toddlers don’t need to diet. Kids and teens should not be encouraged to diet either given the statistics on the body dysmorphia and eating disorders they develop for life. Thanks!

by Angie_mia

Im using upgraded PRO version.
PROs: I switched to Fooducate from My Fitness Pal only because they have a feature of different Diets such as PCOS (my case), Diabetic , Low Carb and etc. so I’m very happy to be able to check for pcos compliance food. I’m exited for new medical conditions to be added in Fooducate ! (For example thyroid disease diet)
-Also Fooducate is great at showing you red flags of the food!! (Usage of artificial sweetener, hydrogenate oils, glycerol and other nasty stuff that MyFitnessPal Can’t see) So I found out many of my favorite food is contained dangerous stuff, hidden behind innocent words in ingredients. Amazing!
Cons:
1)Scanner doesn’t work! ( most of the time. ) MyFitnessPal is scanning fast within a seconds and find your food immediately - this app can’t do it, you will be inputting all food yourself and will waste a lot of time doing this.
2) Database is very VERY poor! MyFitnessPal has almost all food you can ever imagine in their database , in this app you will have to “create a new food” each time you add it.

Bottom line: regarding all cons I purchased PRO version of this app, because it’s contributing more to my health and PCOS condition. But it would be nice if they could fix their scanner and update their database with more food (or just ask MyFitness Pal to share their amazing database)

by Stvnjs

I have struggled for years to lose weight. Sometimes successfully, other times, not so much. I have found this app to be a much more useful tool than others I have tried. The thing is, its on me to actually enter in the food I’ve eaten and Fooducate makes it very easy to do so. I also love how it figures out the calories I need to reach my goals. The grades for food are extremely helpful when at the supermarket trying to determine what I should or should not buy. Lastly, I like that it gives me alternatives to the “bad” foods. That way I can make up my mind if I want an apple or a highly processed bar of some kind that might be labeled as healthy but in reality is not.

by Emsmy1luv

I’ve used Fooducate off and on for several years now. The best app for counting calories and checking the value of ingredients in the foods you buy. I myself count calories and like to know what is really in certain sauces or prepared foods I eat. I love the scan barcode feature and the details you can read about the ingredients in the prepared things you buy. Hands down best app for staying healthy. I have tried others and always rely on this one for all of my info to a healthy lifestyle. It does so much more than even mentioned, and all within the free options of Fooducate . Pretty stoked after 4+ years of using Fooducate these features are still free.

by RetiredOnFire

I use this app when I need to get on track and start budgeting my food intake. I have a tendency to start eating more over time. When I find the scale is creeping up I use it as a food diary and it gets me back to eating properly. I did Weight Watchers years ago and found the “tracking “ useful to become more aware of what I’m eating and make changes. this app is really handy for that. And it lets you input your weight and weight loss goals and then calculates your food intake you need to achieve that. It gives you a lot of flexibility to decide how long you’d like to take. It also grades your food choices. I was surprised to find that Samoa Girl Scout cookies have trans fats. Tasty but not worth it.

by Sully2306

This is a great app for really understanding what you are putting into your body. I love that it also gives you healthier alternatives to replace unhealthy foods with. It’s so easy to scan the barcode of the food you want to know more about and instantly you can see the grade of the food and why it received the grade it did. There are so many hidden potential dangers in our foods today. If your scanned item isn’t in their system you can have them add it by submitting some data to the makers of Fooducate and they will return with your item added and graded. Fantastic app! It makes transitioning to healthier eating seem more attainable by providing knowledge and makes it fun because it’s interactive.

by Athena570

I have been eating foods and wondering what’s inside them each day and have yet to find an app that does that and more. So when I stumbled open this I felt amazing! Fooducate was well organized and as a played around with it I enjoyed the fact that I could scan foods in store to find out if they are healthy or not and why! Fooducate taught me a lot about harmful things in Our everyday food and how to save money and be healthy! I especially like the tracker which is the first one I have ever gotten that works and preforms amazingly without having any charge. If you are looking to know what’s in your food and how to track and improve your health download this app (lol I sound like a ad) Fooducate is awesome!!

by Eyalkr1

For years, I had all the intentions of buying and eating healthy food - but I was mislead by the “healthy” brands. When I realized that you need to check the labels and read ingredients - I was frustrated that it takes long time and learning (eg, more than 20 names to sugars are used just to hide the fact that a product contains lots of it 🙁).
With this app, I just scan the label and get healthy scores, and tips. It also offers alternative product which is similar but more healthy. For example, it helped me replace all the junk heavy sugar cornflakes, with low sugar alternative - and oatmeals.
The main feature of Fooducate is scan food. You can also personalize recommendations, based on your diet goals.

Using Fooducate was the biggest and easiest improvement in my health habits...

by HGM889

I absolutely love Fooducate! I downloaded this app a while back when I had a bit of extra weight I wanted to lose and fell in love with it. It really helped me become more aware of the food I was eating and the different ways food labels trick us into eating unhealthy foods. I scan literally every new food I choose when I’m in the supermarket to make sure I am keeping in line with my health goals. Anytime I hear about new nutrition trends/ingredients/products, this app is the first place I go to check it out. I also love how Fooducate shows me if a food I scan has nightshades in it. I have a major food sensitivity to nightshades and they are often hidden in the ingredients, so this makes my life way easier! Fooducate has changed the way I look at the foods I eat and helped me so much in my health journey.

by HypotheticaLee

I got in the know about this app. I told all my friends and family members to download it. A few days later my mom said I put her on a diet and that she is eating more healthy. That's when I decided to download Fooducate too and let me tell you: this app is an app that I love because it improves the health of the people that I care about. I'll help the this app app out by sending products their team hasn't posted info about yet. You are excused to leave the this app app page on Fooducate store only if you are a certified healthatrician. Download this app. Do it for your health! And tell all the people in your circle about it and make everyone healthy! Thank you, this app team, for making more people healthy! 🌟

by George Lucas Was Better

Don’t download Fooducate. Not only is it useless in terms of finding foods to catalog (never once have I found a food that is in the database), the community is so heavily moderated that virtually all freedom of speech is stripped away. You can’t even talk about vegetables... the epitome of healthy eating and your ability to discuss vegetables and how they were grown gets you banned from the community. (Not kidding... I legitimately got banned for talking about eggplants and zucchini). However... you are allowed to post risqué photos of yourself just as long as they are “progress photos”. Pay no attention to the itsy bitsy teeny weeny panties and no bra or the banana hammock underwear. It is also permissible to post pictures of naked cartoons with captions that suggest something other than healthy eating. These are ok but don’t you dare talk about that eggplant... don’t do it. The ban hammer will be used generously. I am confident that they discriminate users who use the free service and let the paid service members do whatever they want. The help center usually will not help or even listen - they couldn’t care less about the users.

Save yourself the time and download MyFitnessPal by Under Armor. Its a far superior app

by TAArtz

Fooducate helps me realize what quality of food I eat. It keeps track of my exercise, water intake, and what I eat at every meal/snack with breakdown of calories. It adjusts calories I can have based on my exercise. It doesn’t display the other nutrition information, but it does transfer that information to the health app. What frustrates me is when I am entering food for a certain meal, it changes the time to when it thinks that meal should be. I wish it would leave the time as current and let me change it if necessary. It has a database of thousands of foods and lets me add foods and recipes (until today). I have had Fooducate for about 6 months for free. I don’t know if they changed something recently to limit capability.

by Shellygefen26

I’ve been struggling with my weight since early childhood. Now in my thirties with two kids of my own I can’t believe some of the stupid diets I have tried. this app has taught me that eating real food is the key, not any special or expensive diet foods laced with artificial sweeteners and other questionable ingredients. Fooducate breaks down every single food on earth for you explaining why a product is healthy or not based on its ingredients. I love the explanations and have learned so much. Another thing I love about Fooducate is its community. You guys know who you are!! Absolutely got my back both in public forums and private chats. I couldn’t have lost the last 15 pounds without their support.

by Staygold415

I love Fooducate! It is far different from the other calories tracker app because it also educates you and grades certain foods. It informs you whether the food or drink you consume is healthy for you by grading it. For example if the food is healthy enough to eat Fooducate grades it at A+ or close to that and if the food is unhealthy to eat, Fooducate grades the food closer to a letter D. This really has educated me based on the grading scores of the foods. It truly helps me stay away from the bad and unhealthy foods out there. It’s also community based so the list of foods just keeps growing and growing. I totally recommend this to anyone trying to get fit/healthy.