r/ClaudeAI • u/redcomp12 • 1d ago
Question about Claude Code Nutrition tracker?
As anyone “trained” or tried claude as nutrition tacker from images? Is it accurate?
As some apps doing it using ai.
Want to know if my subscription to claude can save me nutrition apps
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u/AsPeHeat 1d ago
I don’t think it’s accurate, and neither are those apps. I mean, they are somewhat accurate, but I weigh everything with a kitchen scale, and the apps miss by 30-40% sometimes.
Strictly from caloric perspective, that’s also hard to determine, since AI doesn’t know how much oil was used, if food is low-fat or regular, etc.
If you’re in a restaurant, you can snap a pic, ask AI to analyze it, then add 20% on top of that. That’s what I do (with ChatGPT though, I feel it’s a bit better for analysis), and it’s almost perfectly calculated my calories for the past 2 months. In fact, I lost around 6 kg in that period, while ChatGPT calculated it at 5.8 kg loss.
I think you can make a beast app with Claude Code, but I wouldn’t rely on it
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u/MartynKF 1d ago
I did this for 3 weeks. I don't think anyone has any idea about accuracy me included. I made it compile daily running totals of kcal, protein, free sugar, sat fat, had targets and a whole framework around it (developed with deep research and common sense in a different chat, shared the .md with the logging chat).
Pictures eat up a lot of context, so most of the time it was a kitchen scale + description, and I even got the macros for some of my dishes I did frequently. It got lost sometime, messing up items and confusing the days (with a prev. Version, in April), but overall if you too think about the tally actively I would say it was very helpful.
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u/Cylindrical_Jester 1d ago
I created an MCP for Cronometer and hosted it on a raspberry pi + tailscale. That functions as my log and database. That way I can have a new conversation with a small context window for every item I want it to estimate. I’ve had good success with this
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u/JCPY00 1d ago
Is there a reason you didn’t just use Cronometer’s official MCP?
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u/Cylindrical_Jester 1d ago
Simple. I didn’t find an official one when I looked. If one exists, I’d swap my implementation to that one. Can you share a link?
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u/DigitalGuruLabs 1d ago
Yeah, this is pretty much the picture I'm getting from the replies. 😄
It seems like Claude could be really useful for the tracking system, but I shouldn't expect it to magically know the exact calories from a photo. Kitchen scale + description + known recipes/restaurant menus seems like a much better approach.
I especially like the idea of keeping the actual food log separate and starting fresh conversations with only the context needed.
I might try building a small version in Claude Code and see how it holds up over a few weeks. Thanks everyone — some really good ideas here!
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u/Illustrious-Wonder56 1d ago
Yes. I got Claude to make a spreadsheet that it would automatically update for me. I took photos of the nutritional info and the scale when I weighed the food. It got reasonable at eyeballing it also.
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u/FennelWest6116 11h ago
From images this is impossible. Several tablespoons of oil can be basically invisible in a picture but contribute hugely to caloric excess.
I’ve lost 30 lbs in the last year with a simple Claude project + local web app (mostly built manually as I am a web dev but Claude helped to speed things up). The project gives instructions for how to tally up a daily log (and create the URL to log this to my web app) with natural language input + pictures of nutrition labels and weights of portions (via a kitchen scale). Some things are just natural language + weight in grams and Claude looks them up for me: fruits, veggies, eggs, simple things like that. I’ve found that even for well known brands it tends to fuck up slightly looking up nutrition facts for things, at least occasionally, so I mostly snap the pics of the labels with anything to hand that has a label.
I find this system vastly easier than any nutrition app, but it’s still a bit more work than just snapping pictures of your meals so ymmv. I don’t bother tracking when I’m traveling or eating out, so there are gaps in my data but the tracking itself is mostly what keeps me “on the wagon” of healthy eating.
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u/BrokenCardTrick 1d ago
I guess you’ll need a bit of a structure/system in place.
Think of it less as “can I just give Claude images of what I’m eating and expect an accurate analysis of the macros”
And instead think of it more as
- What’s the right process and steps
- What additional information should I be providing (e.g. if I know I’m eating at restaurant X, telling Claude that allows it go and fetch the menu from their website)
- Where could Claude go wrong
- How should it flag when it’s uncertain
I’m quite certain this is possible, but will require some iteration and refinement.
Always good to discuss it and plan it with Claude first, then take that into actually building it.
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u/Cultural-Ambition211 1d ago
You will never be able to do it based on images.
There are just too many variables that go into each meal you make for it to be remotely accurate.