iPhone calorie counter app round-up

The calorie counter is a type of app that is perhaps perfectly made for the iPhone. Because unlike a computer or a notepad, you take your phone with you everywhere - so it's always on hand to note what you are eating and how many calories of your daily intake you have scoffed.

Indeed the current batch of calorie counters not only keep track of your food and calorie consumption they can track your weight loss (or gain), offer access to online help and support as well as the ability to look up the nutritional info for hundreds of thousands of foods and products online.

Indeed there is even now a calorie counter app called Foodscanner that uses the iPhone's built-in camera to scan the barcode on the food product you've bought and then automatically downloads the amount of calories, saturated fats, salt and other stuff onto your daily planner. Pretty cool, eh?

So why are we not more excited? Because in the course of researching this article and reviewing these various iPhone calorie counters we've found that they nearly all share one thing in common: they are made in the USA. That means in most cases no easy database look-ups for UK products and often confusing conversions between US Imperial and Metric units.

These are the best of a pretty mediocre bunch. The UK market is crying out for a well localised and well executed iPhone app. Will someone please deliver it soon..?

MyNetDiary

MyNetDiary is different in that it's not a standalone iPhone app and requires that you sign up to the website - at $9 per month although the app itself is then free, a bit like Spotify. But you do get the ability to sync between the app and your iPhone wirelessly.

And adding the custom foods, drinks and workouts is a lot easier with a keyboard. The 80,000 food item database may not be as large as some rivals but it has a usable selection of UK foods - though for some reason confectionery and chocolates are totally missing.

Perhaps the manual entry is a punishment for lapsing? Both the website and the app have some usability niggles but once you've overcome these and set yourself up the syncing becomes a real plus. There's a raft of decent online facilities plus it's the only app that lets people take 'Before' and 'After' pics of themselves (or their beerguts). A worthy contender.

Name: MyNetDiary

Developer: MyNetDiary.com

Version: 1.22

Price: 'Free' with online $9 monthly subscription

Pros: Decent UK brand database, Real-time syncing with website, Smart design, Community features

Cons: $9 per month subscription, Confusing interface

Verdict: The online syncing makes it stand out but so does the monthly outlay.

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Tap & Track

Tap & Track is a well thought out and beautifully designed calorie counter and fitness tracker for the iPhone. Sure it suffers from a certain amount of US-centricity but changing the units does free you from fluid ounces and teaspoons while the interface itself makes adding custom foods and exercise relatively easy.

Note to other developers: follow these guys' example, use Apple's own tools for entering figures into the iPhone - they are invariably better than your lame alternatives). We particularly liked the way it used the iPhone's built-in accelerometer to activate the weight-loss (or weight-gain) graphs in landscape mode. Nice.

Once again the built-in database is rubbish with UK foods but the interface for adding custom is better than most we've seen. There is also a handy Quick Add Calories button for when you don't have time to enter every item on the nutrition label. Our only real issue is that some of the recommended daily calorie intakes seemed rather extreme: 1800 calories a day for a man aiming to lose just 0.25kg per week? Surely some mistake...

Overall this is probably the best self-contained calorie counter and exercise plan. Only the lack of an online element - and the ability to sync with it - and a UK database holds it back.

Name: Tap & Track

Developer: Nanobit

Version: 3.3

Pros: Great design and interface, good value, intelligent use of iPhone feature set

Cons: No UK products, no online element

Verdict: The best self-contained calorie counter and exercise plan. Will someone please localise it for the UK?

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LiveStrong Calorie Tracker

This is another website/iPhone combo - this time the Calorie Tracker iPhone app ties in with the Lance Armstrong-sponsored LiveStrong web diet plan. Unlike MyNetDiary, the LiveStrong plan is free - but the downside is that the website is absolutely plastered with advertising. You pay your money, you take your choice.

The iPhone app does sync with the website but the updates are intermittent. Similarly the food product search often seems to time out - even with a wi-fi connection. That said, the database is pretty good for UK produce - it was the only one reviewed that found my Pret A Manger ham and cheese sarnie (and its trouser tightening 23.1g of fat!). But what the app gives with one hand it takes with the other - there is no way to enter custom foods on the app itself. Why, Lance why?

Other annoying elements were a bug in the exercise function which meant that you couldn't specify a duration of under 60 minutes until you had added it to your plan and then re-edited it. I know Lance is superfit but the rest of us ain't.

The overall impression is that this is a work in progress. Iron out the bugs - notably the syncing and the custom food ommission - and this would be as competitive an app as Lance himself.

Name: Calorie Tracker by LiveStrong/p>

Developer: LiveStrong.com/p>

Version: 2.04

Price: £1.79

Pros: Good UK food databese, online integration, no subscription

Cons: Ad-heavy website, slow to sync, buggy

Verdict: Iron out the bugs please Lance. But it's a decent start...

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