MealSnap for iPhone.

So Randy published a new post on his site entitled “MealSnap for iPhone: A Picture is Worth A 1000 Calories“.
MealSnap is an iPhone app that allows the user to take a picture of the meals they desire to eat, and then tells you what foods and nutritional values are in your meal. It calculates the amount of calories in your meal and keeps track of the foods you eat.
In Randy’s post he states that he put the app to the test and the results were pretty descent and impressive for a food recognition app.

Now if you know me, if anything has anything to do with fitness- I’m on it. More importantly, I know Randy’s social reputation so I had no problem purchasing this app.

I downloaded MealSnap and immediately put it work. For me personally, when I test things I try to test the most complex items or subjects to see how good the developer’s claims are.
I tested a bean salad.
With all the different ingredients and the complexity of a visual collage, I knew this would be the perfect test (by the way, I’m great at estimating calories so before I measured this I estimated this serving to be 210 calories).
This is the photo I took:

As you can see from the photo, there is a real mixture of ingredients, oils and flavours that I poured into this dish last night. The approximate calorie count is 186-280 for this serving thus resulting in an average of 230 calories.
OK, big deal let’s compare it online.

I entered the credentials that composed this salad (with slight differences of seeds and oil making up for the corn I had in my dish) into Calorie Count to measure the estimated calculated calorie balance. This was the estimated count:

As you can see, the estimated calorie count is 215 for my specific mixture (I chose the most closest match of all the “Bean Salad” selections I could find in the search results). Not bad for a benchmark, considering that my initial guess was 210 calories, MealSnap estimated about 230 calories between 186-280.

Again, if you know me, I am a detail freak and very meticulous when it coms to testing and investigation. I had to do just one more test. I got out my brand new Salter calorie counter, emptied the bowl containing the bean salad, cleaned it out, put the bowl on the Salter and reseted the calorie count to 0.0.
I then added the bean salad and entered the appropriate code “525″.

A few seconds later the measured calorie count calculated at 207. OK, now I’m impressed.

So let’s do the math by calorie count against 4 tests:
210 calories by my initial estimation.
230 calories estimation from MealSnap
215 calories estimation from Calorie Counter.
207 calories estimated from an official Salter Calorie Counter
The calculated and official estimated result is 215.5

Based on my exercises, the calculated and official estimated result is 215.5. Meal Snap estimated 230 calories. What a fantastic estimation.

These are one of those rare occasions where I literally put in the work to justify a purchase and test the claims made by developers. I’m very happy with the results and if you are interested in your fitness and nutritional intake, MealSnap seems to be the real deal.
Next time you eat out, try taking a photo of a menu item with MealSnap and make a healthy decision before you order.
Obviously MealSnap may or may not be right on the money, however this is an excellent gage to calculate calories, if you want to lose weight, play it safe by eating a meal with the highest calorie estimation that you can afford to burn off throughout the day (for me my highest calorie estimation based on 6 meals within one day would be 300 calories per meal.) If you are into body building and desire to put on weight via muscle increase, lean towards the lower end of the calorie count estimated by MealSnap. (Make sure the meal in question is low in fat, moderate in good carbohydrates and very high in protein).

I will be introducing MealSnap to my fellow peers at the gym.