Anyone use Livestrong/Daily Plate ? Is it down?

Hmm.... I logged in and it's not down for me. 

P.S. I'm not a regular user because I find many of their items to have inaccurate calorie values.
example: shrimp, 4 oz = 80 calories
                shrimp, 1 oz = 30 calories

I had actually heard it was one of the better ones out there.  As with any calorie tracker site, the user has to do a little bit of a sanity check.  If three entries all match and one has a different number of calories (as in your example)  you can pretty much guess which one is the outlier.  Even in your example though, you're only talking about a 10 calorie per oz difference.  I realize in weight loss every calorie counts...but that really isn't much of a difference.  It could be the difference between cooked weight and raw weight.  Again, responsibility falls a bit to the user to use their common sense.

well, that was just an example.  There were a few other differing shrimp calorie values, and then there are many other items with the same issue.  Just trying to help the infrequent calorie counters out there.  What can I say, it's the statistician in me wanting the data to be as clean as possible.   When there's better data out there, I use it.


Edited by DMW 2009-08-11 8:17 PM

I use livestrong and have been since Jan, lost 50 lbs by just keeping track of my eating.  My training was always good but eating sucked.  By seeing what I was eating and knowing what I had left really helped me to make decisions on when to cheat and not.  Also a key item for me was the HRM to acurately track my calorie burn during my workouts.  As for the accuracy of the calories there are some that are bogus but usually you can find ones that fit what you actually ate, I still look at labels to determine the right one and then if they do not have the exact one I pick the one that is near the calorie content.

I've been using it for 8 months.  Sometimes the site has issues, and sometimes your browser doesn't like certain settings it uses, or that gets changed in your browser.  They seem to have some glitches the last few months as well.  Try going to the Daily Plate directly if livestrong.com doesn't work.

As far as accuracy, I agree that it can be all over the place, but the DP is a great resource to have.  It's also very accurate too, and has lots of foods in it you might be surprised to find.  I also have the iPhone app.  I try to use the "verified" ones when they are present.  I always do a comparison check with new foods either by comparing it to the label, or compare it to Jeanne Netzer's "The Complete Book of Food Counts."  Once you get something in there you like, I generally rely on the "food I eat regularly".

I tried it again.  I really wanted to like it, because I'm looking for a food log with a publicly viewable link.  The pictures are so cute. nBut it said my peanut butter was 579 calories for 2 tablespoons, and it was a verified item.  Who the heck verified that?  Clearly, I'm way too uptight for this food log.

Ok time to check out sparkpeople or fitday I guess.  I use calorie-count now because it lets me put in recipe text and then divide up the servings, which I haven't found anywhere else.


Edited by DMW 2009-08-15 2:45 PM