The main issue I see with solving this problem is, as you also discovered in your research, that it’s tedious. I’ve tried using apps like My Fitness Pal several times, but I always stop using it after about a week because the task of having to weigh everything I put in my mouth is so tiresome. And it even gets worse if you forget to log a meal (or a full day of meals) and you have to try to remember what you ate and guesstimate how much each item weighed.
I think you bring some interesting things to the table — appealing visuals, gamification elements — that could make the experience of using the app less of a chore and more fun. But the challenge of making it easier to log your food is, as I see it, remains unimproved.
I unfortunately don’t think there’s an easy way to solve this (apart from only eating things with a barcode on them), perhaps when camera technology gets better at identifying food so you can just snap a photo of your meal and the app will calculate the nutritional information.
Nice read though, interesting to follow your process.
