Weight loss app counts calories with your food pics
Counting calories is about to get a lot easier.
The nutrition tracking app Lose It has introduced a new feature that allows users to count calories in their food by uploading photos.
Called "Snap it," the feature is out now on both the iOS and Android version of the app.
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The weight loss app has had food-tracking for years but required users to manually enter what they were eating into its database to track calories and nutrition. Now, users can speed up this process by taking photos of their food within the app.
The company has developed image recognition software that is able to guess what's in the photo and match it to items in the app's database. If it's not able to find a corresponding entry, you can manually enter one yourself.
We took the feature for a spin and it was able to successfully offer the correct suggestion for an apple and some Sour Patch Kids candy.
Importantly, it doesn't automate the logging experience entirely but it does make it a lot easier. After identifying the item, you still need to select the appropriate entry and customize it with the serving size and other information. For the most part, it's only able to recognize general categories of food -- like sushi or candy, for example -- so you'll still need to select the specific item in order to get an accurate entry.
Still, it should eliminate a fair bit of searching -- Lose It's app has thousands of foods in its database -- and the company says the feature is still in a beta phase, so it should improve over time.
Karissa was Mashable's Senior Tech Reporter, and is based in San Francisco. She covers social media platforms, Silicon Valley, and the many ways technology is changing our lives. Her work has also appeared in Wired, Macworld, Popular Mechanics, and The Wirecutter. In her free time, she enjoys snowboarding and watching too many cat videos on Instagram. Follow her on Twitter @karissabe.
