But who keeps a food journal? Exactly.
Unless you have extreme note-taking OCD like me, it’s too much of a pain in the ass to write down what you eat and track it all. I use the online food database here to keep my facts straight, but data entry sucks no matter how you slice it.
Here are first-look highlights of the FoodScanner, which launched a few hours ago and is now available…
1. DailyBurn’s FoodScanner is the first and only application that uses the iPhone’s camera to scan the UPC codes of foods and link them with full nutritional information (calories, macronutrients, etc.).
2. With a built-in database of more than 200,000 foods, it is the easiest way to accurately log what you eat during the day and keep an up-to-date calorie and nutrient count. All information is automatically synced with DailyBurn’s sophisticated workout and nutrition-tracking web application.
3. You don’t have to use the new 3GS with auto-focus. It works accurately on all iPhones using the most accurate scanning technology for iPhone – Occipital’s Red Laser.
4. You can also track natural foods (not processed) by searching by name or brand.
Full disclosure: I am an advisor to DailyBurn, but I chose to work with them specifically because I selfishly wanted to have the tools I need to geek out in less time. Here is another favorite new feature: breakdown of meals by protein/carbohydrate/fat composition (http://dailyburn.com/foods once logged in).
Keep in mind that FoodScanner is not a tool for teaching people to eat bar-coded foods. In fact, it can be quite the opposite: an awareness-building tool that makes you less likely to eat crap. Though the manual natural food tracking still requires some automating in the future, the technology is moving in the right direction.
iPhone screenshots can be seen in Gizmodo’s review.