Meal Snap lets you count calories with your phone’s camera
Will Brinson
When I first saw the concept of Meal Snap, an app that lets you take pictures of your food and then counts your calories, I thought, “That’s stupid and will never, ever work.” Actually, I might have said, “How in the hell is it going to count the pound of pimento cheese I eat every day of the Masters?”
The point being is that I wasn’t really convinced that Meal Snap would actually, you know, work. Think about it: how is whatever processes these photos — the app explanation calls it “magic” — going to know everything about a particular meal? Or at least enough, from a photo, about a meal to accurately judge the caloric value.
And yet, IT DOES.
Witness my lunch today, which was a Bagel Thin (like a bagel, but thinner!), everything-style, cut in half and toasted with some Cracker Barrel cheddar cheese on it, photographed post-toasting and from a straight vertical angle. Good luck with that, Meal Snap! (*laughs evilly*)
WHAT THE F&$%?!?! How did it know that? And, wow, no wonder I can’t get rid of my belly — I was always kind of deluding myself into thinking such a meal (which can be breakfast a lot of times) was like 200 “healthy” calories or something. (Yes, I am stupid.)
Either way, impressive. Like, if it had said “cheese bagel, 1-1000 calories” I would have crushed it. But it knew that this was an everything bagel, despite said bagel being non-everything side face up and covered in cheese. Seriously, look at that picture and tell me how the hell you’re supposed to figure out it’s an everything bagel? Unless the faux granite fooled it or something.
Anyway, I tested it out on a couple other things, because, in all fairness, 418-627 calories is kind of a broad range and even I can’t really know the answer to exactly how many calories are in it (because it’s fairly imprecise and whatnot).
BAM. That’s an 80-calorie yogurt serving and Meal Snap kind of nailed it. Sure, actually saying “80 calories” would be nice, but “60-90″ is pretty darn close. And, yeah, that’s totally the Future Mrs. Brinson’s 80-calorie yogurt snacks that she has for breakfast.
What about my breakfast? Well glad you asked:
That’s right, baby. One pound of raw — but lean! — beef coming right up. I’m not sure that’s entirely accurate (I think even the leanest of beef has like 600 calories per pound) but maybe they were going with the idea that anyone who eats a pound of lean beef for breakfast either has fingers too fat to use an iPhone or is already dead?
Either way, an impressive showing for Meal Snap. One downside I see to this getting popular, though, is the proliferation of what people eat to Facebook and Twitter.
Trust me, people using Meal Snap, everyone hates your stupid check-ins on Foursquare. Don’t give us reason to unfriend/unfollow you because you’re obsessed with telling everyone what you ate for breakfast.
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