Mobile - Add a Food

This article will cover:

• Using the food search filters
• Using the add food dialogue
• Using a better alternative
• Marking a favorite
• Multi-add 

To add a food to your diary, open the bottom console by using the + button at the bottom of your screen. Tap Add Food to use the text based search, or Scan Food to use the Barcode scanner.

Select Add Food to open the text based search. The list will automatically populate with the most frequently used foods you have added to your diary. Tap on the food’s name to open more options such as serving size and diary group choices, or simply tap the check box to add the listing to the foods you would like to add to your diary.

You can search for a food directly, or you can filter your search results further. If you are unable to find a food with a text based search, tap the barcode icon to the left of the text box for a shortcut to our barcode scanner.

Start typing in the name of the food item you want to add. For example, type ‘oats’ to start seeing suggestions. You can enter keyword fragments separated by spaces to narrow your search. For example, typing ‘soup car’ will find results such as ‘Carrot Soup’. You can also search by food number or barcode number. Results are ranked by a combination of how well the name matches your search, and how popular the item is.

After that, simply check the boxes of the foods you wish to add simultaneously. You can see a summary of all the foods you are about to add to your diary by tapping on the bottom drawer. You can see the number of foods you are about to add to your diary indicated in the Review Items button. Once you are happy with your selection, click Add to Diary.

Food Search Filter Menu

Explore some options to customize the food search to work efficiently for you. Tap the orange filter menu next to the search field to view the options available.

Sort By

Choose how to organize the default list of foods displayed when you open the food search. Choose an option that helps you quickly and easily select foods to add to your diary the best.

1. Alphabetically: A-Z or Z-A
2. Most Recent – ordered by the most recent foods added to your food diary.
3. Most Frequent – the foods you’ve added to your diary most often in the last 20 days.

If you also use Category tabs, these defaults will be applied to the category in which you are searching too.

Category Tabs

Use categories to narrow down your search results and make foods quicker and easier to find. Toggle on Category Tabs in Food search options to display the category tabs above the food search results. Scroll the tabs left and right and tap on a tab to narrow down you search to a particular category.

• All: This tab shows all the search results for the text entered in the search box.
• Favorites: This tab shows all the foods you have previously marked as favorites. 
• Common: This tab shows results from our highest quality nutrition databases and will typically have the most nutrition information available for a particular food. To get the most nutrition information using Cronometer, we recommend searching for whole foods, and generic versions of your brand name products in this search tab.
• Supplements: This tab shows all results that match the text entered that belong to the Supplements category.
• Brands: This tab displays results that are brand name products i.e. store-bought brands and common products you find on the shelves of the supermarket. These results often have fewer nutritional data because food manufacturers typically only report the nutrients required by law on the nutrition label. Foods found in this tab will often have a Better Alternative marked by one of our curation staff, offering a similar food with more complete nutritional data for you to add to your diary instead.
• Custom: This tab displays all the custom foods and recipes that you have created as well as the custom foods and recipes that have been shared with you by other users.
• Restaurants: This tab displays foods ordered at a restaurant. Many restaurants provide some basic energy and nutritional data for the food they serve, but like the Brands category, that data is usually limited.

Database

You can  search a single source of data, such as NCCDB, or a combination of databases using the filter menu. Tap each database you would like to use each one.
The database you’ve selected are displayed at the top of the search results. Tap it if you’d like to remove it and your search results will update to remove it. When you remove them all, the food search will revert to searching all data sources used in Cronometer.

You can learn more about our data sources in the corresponding section of our user manual.

Enter Serving Details

Once you have found the food you are looking for, select it from the list. Select the serving size and quantity. Gold users can also choose to add a Timestamp and Diary Group.

In this section you can see some basic information about energy and the macronutrient breakdown. Before adding a food to your diary, you can easily see if this listing is a good source of data by looking at how many nutrients it contains and where the data is obtained from. Hover your mouse over the circle graph to view the number of Calories or kJ from each macronutrient in your food.

• Select XX Listed Nutrients to view full nutrient breakdown

Better Alternatives

Some foods have a better alternative with more nutrients marked. Our curation team is hard at work identifying products in the brand database that have generic equivalents with better data. If they’ve tagged a food as having a better alternative, we show you a handy link to the better option.

Have a look at this Blog Post for some tips and tricks to keep in mind when choosing foods!

Favorites

If you use this food often, mark it as a favorite, so that you can easily find it in the favorites tab at a later date! To mark a food as a favorite, use the menu found in the top right corner of the add food screen, then select Add to Favorites from the populated menu. This food will now appear when you are using the Favorites category filter.

Tip: Report an issue using this menu as well! If you find a problem with the data in the listing you are viewing, let us know! Learn more in the Report An Issue article 

To remove a food as a favorite, simply navigate back to this screen and perform the same action. You will be able to see if the food is a favorite or not as an orange star will indicate favorites next to the name in this screen. 

Click Save to add this item to your list of foods you wish to add to your diary at this time.

Learn how to Add a Food on the Web version of Cronometer