I work for a company that offers nutrition tracking on an app in the App Store.

We are not shipping camera functionality yet. But our concept is to not necessarily guarantee the accuracy of portions but to make lookup easier.

We also spent the time to get the AI integrated with a verified database. This made our results far more accurate.

We tended to find that without the lookup the calories and macros would be generally correct. The math was usually within a margin of error of 5%. This was acceptable except that… there was no micronutrient values and you couldn’t really adjust the portions at all. The system just dumps the macros and while you can halve something… the user experience isn’t great.

Ultimately, if you want precision: manual entry is the only way to go. I feel like out approach will end up being very great once we work out the kinks. Our search isn’t spectacular and as a team we are learning a lot of about prompt engineering and how to make best use of the AI.

Yes, I would think that would work better indeed. As a augmentation or help tool. I would love to be able to say to MyFitnessPal that 'I ate this and that food, same as usual, and oh yeah drank this.' Just as a easier input interface. I wouldn't trust a pure AI solution without some proper database behind it.

Yeah. The big problem is that "augmentation" is hard because we (humans) have an internal process for how we think about things that is hard to define and building a flowchart for how we understand foods doesn't even necessarily capture things. Very well. You can take something like "chocolate chip pancakes" where the context can be "<brand> <item>" or "<modifier> <food item>". And then you can search.

But even though we've integrated it with a good food database, the process of searching isn't great because sometimes things like brand names don't get recognized and/or modifiers may get confused because... is it a brand? Is it a way of preparing something?

Ultimately we are working on improving how our search works by not just searching by the name, but by getting information about brand, the product, and possible serving options as well. These would better inform the search and allow us to, say, fallback without a brand if we can't find the brand.

The other problem has to do with variant detection. I can say "kirkland sous vide egg bites" but there are 3-4 variants of them. And right now most databases are just "here is the item you requested" without looking at possible variants, which is a problem that we are going to end up solving ourselves.

It's been interesting because we've learned a lot about how people "think" it should work vs. how it actually works.

Does that work for homemade food as well? The vast majority of the food we eat is homemade with recipes that don’t have any sort of nutritional information. I’ve always wished there was a simple way to figure out the calories. Taking a picture would be ideal.

For homemade food it should be easier to make reliable estimates of the calorie content, because you know with certainty all the food ingredients and their amounts.

The food ingredients with the highest calorie content, like various kinds of seeds or nuts or flour or meal or oil or fat or sugar or dried fruits or dairy products, come usually with calorie estimates from their vendors.

For other ingredients, like various kinds of meat or of fresh vegetables or fruits, there are online databases with typical nutritional information, like the USDA database. Some of that information can even be found in the corresponding Wikipedia pages.

Absolutely.

Weighing everything (rather than using volumetric measures) is generally going to be the BEST way to ensure consistency and accuracy.

What's also important is that, in general, even if you are 20% off on something (e.g. I logged 2200 calories but I actually consumed 2600 calories) AND you are planning to eat at a caloric deficit, this usually will mean that you will still lose weight or body recomp. It'll just take a little more time.

But if you are just not tracking, it's _so easy_ to miscalculate your intake to the point where you think "oh this isn't that bad." However, the truth is you consumed 4200 calories and that's a big surplus.

So I/we tend to find the value partially in "simple tracking" to get you aware of what you are actually consuming and then find that transitioning to specific portions to be helpful for "dialing in" and achieving specific targets/goals.

With my kids, I just burned them CDs and bought them $15 CD players. They use them a lot. This gives my wife and I ultimate control over what they play—plus we find CDs at estate sales that allow them to build a collection ~$1 at a time.

One of the big things that Forge did for us a long time was handling of deployments. The ability to just have it respond to a commit: download the code, do the build and then restart FPM, was great.

We don't use that anymore, but we use it for provisioning and maintenance of systems... it's not GREAT at that, but it is still super nice to be able to say "stand up a MySQL server" and then it's just up and ready to go in a few minutes without having to deal with Ansible and Akamai...

We use Forge because they support our non-big-3 Cloud provider and because they take the headaches out of provision systems. Overall, it's been great.

The thing I love/hate about Forge is that it makes some stuff JUST easy enough to not have to build yourself, but also makes it just frustrating enough for the customizations/tweaks we've built up over the years.

More recently, we started using the API to script various setups and configurations. It took processes that used to take several hours and made them minutes. This means we avoid having to figure out and manage things likes what the default nginx config is across servers. But then, there is SOME stuff like PHP ini files that you can't modify via the API. So we end up running an amalgamation of API commands with some "command scripts" that do the one-off things.

All things considered, I wish there was an Ansible migration path off of Forge. There are so many little things we've had to do that results in our needing to create and run one-off scripts but Forge has just the little bit of edge that migrating off is "more trouble than it's worth".

I just with they could fix the team dynamics. e.g. I want to be able to have a library of scripts (forge: recipes) my team can run—but since I'm the account owner, only I can run them!

As God intended.

Our men’s group has been reading “Side by Side” by Ed Welch. Great book.

Not only do heels modify someone's height, they also modify the range of motion for doing something like squatting down.

For kids this isn't a problem, they can squat all the way down without issue. But as an adult, regaining that lost mobility is a process!

But, try this: elevate your heels by an inch. Then try 2 inches. You'll find that you can more comfortably squat down the more your heels are elevated. It also impacts center of balance and the angles at which your back is at while squatting.

I read once that people in a certain country were accustomed to doing work in a squat position, perhaps due to lack of chairs/seats for the poor, but I thought it was cool after being forced into a chair/desk posture for my entire life. I've also heard that catchers in baseball retire because their knees give out after the constant squat/crouch position, catching pitches at home plate. Should catchers wear high heels? Got to watch "A League of Their Own" again...

There are weightlifting shoes with an elevated heel for this reason

There are also wedges/slant boards for this purpose.

Lifters also have another purpose: they provide stability by connecting your feet more "solidly" to the ground. Other gym shoes (cross-trainers, running shoes) have padding in them... which is awesome for running but that squishiness can translate to instability when you're literally doubling or tripling the amount of weight.

Consequently, some lifters who have the ankle mobility will lift without shoes. Given the state of most gym floors, that's a no from me, dawg, but hey to each their own.

Now I'm imagining burly weight lifters in stiletto heels.

locally in my area, there is a gym that does it for fundraising.

> And nobody complains because they are completely optional and Taylor Otwell's team puts so much effort into the framework.

And the team also dogfoods heavily.

Laravel has excellent DX because the people building it use it to build those products.

I live in Bell County now but I spent a lot of time in and around small TX towns (smaller even than Zabcikville or Cyclone) where a lot of the residents were 3rd generation or 4th generation immigrants. Growing up we learned some Czech and "Czech identity" was (is still, at least for my "elders") a big deal.

Anyway those "sausage rolls" are called klobasneks (or Klobásniks).

It's a bit of a shibboleth since the only people that seem to know that are the Czech. ;)

Interestingly we never called anything a danish—but we did have a lot of strudels.

I mentioned it in another comment myself, but I think it’s funny how online every time I see this topic this comment about the misnomer comes up. IRL I’ve lived all over the Texas triangle my entire life and have never actually heard anyone say anything other than kolache regardless of sweet/savory. My Czech great grandmother died when I was about 10 though so maybe I just don’t remember hearing it.

My kids have learned the precise term for the savory ones from me, but you're right that most Texans, even many Czech Texans, do not know it! To be fair, the origin is that Czech Texans used the same kolache bread and stuck meat in it. People might not think it matters, but many kolaches I've had from shops do not use the bread I'm familiar with from my grandmother (and cousins). I won't name names, but their bread doesn't taste very good, and only a few shops make the same bread I grew fond of at my grandmother's house, and that same kind of bread was used for both the sausage ones and the sweet ones at my grandmother's house.

Agree that the bread is origin and makes all the difference. Especially when compared to a normal “pig in a blanket” style which usually has biscuit/croissant bread the kolache dough is much sweeter. I’ve tried making it at home a couple times and have never been able to get it quite right. It’s either not sweet enough or not airy enough. I’m not a great cook though tbh.

For me, Shipley Donuts is pretty wide spread in parts of Texas and has good kolaches. There’s found at most donut shops but there’s a thing here too now where most donut shops are owned by SE Asian folks and it seems they all use the exact same dough premix and I think it all tastes pretty bad. Also, if you like cheese in it there’s a big difference as places like Shipley puts more in there and it’s quite a good meat to cheese ratio. The other places only buy sausages with cheese already mixed inside and it’s not cheesy enough IMO.

The kolache market in Dallas is abysmal compared to Houston and Austin and up to West, and pretty everywhere inside that triangle. It seems like Czech folks never ventured north of West lol. Pretty much ever road trip I take from Dallas I’m seeking out a “good” sausage and cheese kolache

I should just learn how to make that dough. I regret not buying that Church of the Visitation (Westphalia) Altar Society cookbook I saw on the counter at Green's.

I’ve not had luck following recipes I’ve found online. Could be my execution but it never turns out right. Most of the original immigrants have passed but if you can learn from someone in person you definitely should not let the opportunity slip by you.

Right. If there is training or some other non-Apple/vendor agnostic stuff that has to go on (VPN) or device management they probably don’t want to get involved.