I'm new to Cronometer, and the more I use it, the more I appreciate how powerful it is. That said, I keep running into a few situations where I think Cronometer could become even better, especially for people who care about accuracy beyond just “did I eat roughly 2,000 kcal today?” (Found it really great at supplement stacking)

So here are three feature requests for my biggest pain points, that I would honestly consider Gold-worthy.

1. “Find a better replacement” for scanned foods

One thing that happens quite often:

You are in a store. You find a food, drink, or ingredient. You scan the barcode. Cronometer finds it. Great. (If not, it's super easy to add it as a Custom Food)

But then you add the entry, and it only contains the basic nutrition label values:

Energy, kcal, protein, carbs, fat, salt, sugar, maybe saturated fat if we are lucky.

Basically, the usual “this is technically food” label data.

What I would love is a feature that lets you find a nutritionally similar replacement from a richer sources like NCCDB or USDA.

For example, when selecting a food from their diary, user can have Cronometer compare the added product against database foods and suggest close matches based on things like:

• Calories/Energy
• Protein
• Carbohydrates
• Fat
• Sugar
• Salt/sodium
• Fiber, if available

Then the user could choose one of two options:

1. Use the better database item instead
2. Enrich the scanned food entry using the better database match

The second option would be especially useful. The barcode item would still represent the actual product I bought, but Cronometer could fill in missing micronutrients and other details using the best available equivalent.

Obviously, it should be clear that the enriched data is estimated, not lab-tested for that exact product. But in many cases, an informed estimate from NCCDB or USDA would be far better than having no data at all.

This would be incredibly useful for generic foods and ingredients like oats, rice, milk, flour, chicken, yogurt, canned tomatoes, protein drinks, and so on.

Right now, I often manually search for a better database item anyway, so having Cronometer assist with this would save time and probably improve data quality.

2. Fitness tracker calorie calibration

Many of us use fitness trackers to estimate energy expenditure, but trackers can be wildly inconsistent. Some overestimate calories burned, some underestimate, and some seem to be powered by optimism and magic numbers.

There are also studies suggesting that many consumer trackers are not very accurate when estimating energy expenditure. One article I found mentions that common trackers may only be around 56.63% accurate for this purpose:
https://wellnesspulse.com/research/accuracy-of-fitness-trackers/

So my feature request is this:

I would love for Cronometer to “learn” how inaccurate a user’s tracker is by comparing:

• Logged calorie intake
• Reported calorie expenditure from the tracker
• Actual weight change over time

In other words, Cronometer could offer a tracker calibration period.

For example, over 1 or 2 weeks, the user would need to:

• Log their weight daily
• Weigh themselves at roughly the same time each day, for example within plus/minus 30 minutes
• Log food intake as accurately as possible
• Keep tracker data connected and active

Cronometer could then compare the expected weight change based on logged intake and reported expenditure against the actual weight trend.

If the tracker says I should have lost 1 kg, but my actual trend suggests I lost 0.5 kg, Cronometer could estimate that the tracker is overreporting expenditure. If the opposite happens, it could estimate that the tracker is underreporting.

After the calibration period, Cronometer could offer something like:

>"Based on your logged intake, weight trend, and tracker data, your tracker appears to overestimate activity calories by approximately 18%. Would you like Cronometer to apply this adjustment going forward?"

The user could then choose to:

• Accept the calibration
• Reject it

After accepting or rejecting, the user can then:

• Continue calibrating for more accuracy
• Abort the calibration

If the user chooses to accept the calibration, the user can then:

• Apply the calibration only going forward
• Optionally backfill the calibration historically for a selected date range

To avoid bad data, Cronometer could abort or pause the calibration if the user skips weight logging or has incomplete calorie logging. That way, it does not try to build a correction factor from messy data.

The longer the user continues the calibration, the better the estimate should become. A minimum period could be 1 or 2 weeks, but Cronometer could continue refining the calibration over time if the user wants. Of course, Cronometer should warn the user that the better and more accurately they log their calories, the better the calibration will be; as the saying goes, "shit in; shit out".

This would make tracker integrations much more useful. Instead of just importing possibly inaccurate calorie burn numbers, Cronometer could interpret them based on the user’s real-world results.

3. Custom columns, serving-size-aware food search, and food comparison

When logging food, I would love more control over the search results table.

Right now, when searching for foods, it can be difficult to compare items quickly. I often want to know things like:

• kcal per 100 g
• protein per 100 g
• carbs per 100 g
• fat per 100 g
• category
• fiber
• sodium
• selected micronutrients

It would be great if users could customize which columns appear in food search results.

Even better, Cronometer could let the user enter a serving size directly in the search view.

For example:

Search: “Greek yogurt”
Serving size: 400 g

Then the search results could show each item’s nutrition for that entered amount:

Food	kcal for 400 g	Protein	Carbs	Fat	Source
Greek yogurt A	240	40 g	16 g	0 g	NCCDB
Greek yogurt B	380	32 g	22 g	18 g	CRDB
Greek yogurt C	300	36 g	20 g	8 g	USDA

This would make it much easier to compare foods before adding them to the diary.

In addition to custom columns, it would also be extremely useful to select two or more foods directly from the search results and open a detailed comparison view.

For example, if I search for “Greek yogurt” and find several similar entries, I could select two of them and compare their full nutritional profiles side by side. Not just kcal, protein, carbs, and fat, but also micronutrients, serving sizes, database source, completeness of data, and maybe even a “data quality” indicator.

Something like:

Nutrient	Greek yogurt A	Greek yogurt B
Calories	240 kcal	380 kcal
Protein	40 g	32 g
Carbs	16 g	22 g
Fat	0 g	18 g
Calcium	480 mg	390 mg
Sodium	140 mg	260 mg
Vitamin B12	1.8 µg	Unknown
Data source	NCCDB	CRDB
Data completeness	High	Basic label only

This would be especially helpful when choosing between branded foods, generic database foods, and richer entries from NCCDB or USDA.

Right now, comparing multiple entries can involve opening one item, checking the details, going back, opening another item, checking those details, forgetting what the first one said, opening the first one again, questioning your life choices, and eventually just picking the one with the nicest name.

A built-in comparison feature would make Cronometer much faster and more useful for meal planning, ingredient comparison, and choosing the most accurate food entry.

It would also pair really well with the first feature request about finding better replacements for scanned foods. If Cronometer suggests a richer NCCDB or USDA match for a barcode item, the user could compare the scanned product and the suggested replacement side by side before deciding whether to use it or enrich the original entry.

Why I think these would be Gold-worthy features

All three of these features are about the same thing: making Cronometer better at turning imperfect real-world data into useful, accurate tracking.

Barcode foods are convenient, but often nutritionally incomplete.
Fitness trackers are convenient, but often inaccurate.
Food search is powerful, but could be much easier to compare at a glance.

Cronometer is already one of the best tools for detailed nutrition tracking, which is exactly why I think features like these would fit so well.

Personally, these are the kind of features I would happily pay Gold membership for.

I keep seeing this feature in the app and keep meaning to try it, but typing is just muscle memory at this point

For those who do use it, when does it actually beat just typing? cooking, on the go, lazy days? Just trying to figure out if it's worth switching my habit

What’s the best entry to use for broiled, boneless, and skinless chicken thighs? I can’t seem to find anything that corresponds to it.

One of the most common questions new users coming from MFP ask is: "How do I quick add macros to my diary?"

Maybe you grabbed a sandwich from a gas station, or tried a new restaurant that had macros listed on the menu but you don't need to save it as a custom food. This is for you.

How to Find Quick Add

Search "quick add" in the Cronometer food database just like you would any other food. You'll see options for:

• Quick Add, Carbohydrate
• Quick Add, Fat
• Quick Add, Protein
• Quick Add, Calorie
• Quick Add Fiber (see note below)

Pro tip: Star/favorite each one so they're always at the top of your favorites tab for faster access.

What About Quick Add Fiber?

Quick Add Fiber isn't natively in the database, but you can create it as a custom food in about 60 seconds:

1. Go to the Foods tab
2. Tap Custom Foods → Create Food
3. Enter these values:
   • Food Name: Quick Add Fiber
   • Serving Name: gram
   • Serving Weight: 1g
   • Energy: 4 kcal (fiber is typically 0–3 cal/g, so adjust if you prefer)
   • Carbs: 1g
   • Fiber: 1g

Efficiency Hack: Create a "Quick Adds" Meal

Once you've got all your quick add entries saved as favorites, you can take it one step further and create a custom Quick Adds meal so they're all in one place:

1. Add all your quick add foods to your diary
2. Swipe right on the diary group
3. Tap "Create Meal from Diary Group"
4. Name it "Quick Adds"

Now it lives in your meals library, and you can pull it up anytime, explode it, and log all the quick adds you need.

Want to see a video walkthrough of how to create a Quick Adds meal? Tap here to watch the video.

Note: I cannot take credit for this hack, u/cinderblock33 mentioned it in here last week!

When I Use Quick Adds

• Menu shows total calories — I'll log the protein source separately and quick add calories to hit the total
• Deli/sushi/sandwiches — If I'm only buying it once, not worth building a custom food
• BLTs (bites, licks, tastes) — Grabbed a few chips or some nuts at a party? It can be easier to quick add ~200 calories than break down seven random bites

This is the last 7 day average (not including today) is 2,850 and my fasted weight each morning after using the washroom has remained the same down to the 145.2 lbs 1/5 lb

I need to cut back and stop eating late and I should start losing weight at 2,200 calories a day moving forward

Let's see how it goes!

I had to log some smoked mackerel recently. I get this from an independent supplier in Scotland, who does not provide nutritional data. When trying to find what to log, I noticed large disparities between, for example, the NCCDB entry for smoked mackerel which cites 25.5 g protein and 199 kcal per 100g, and various UK supermarket entries in CRDB, which cite around 20 g protein and 300 kcal per 100g.
I'm not concerned about small discrepancies here and there, but for a food like this, where 100g or more could easily be an individual portion in a meal, choosing which entry to log will result in big differences that are important to me since I am trying to lose weight and preserve (hopefully even gain) muscle on a calorie allowance of 1400 per day, so calories and protein are the elements to which I pay most attention.

I have to say I am also exhausted by the effort needed to find data for foods from the UK. Even the names of basic foods are not present at times in the common foods search and I need to google a lot to try and find what it is called in the USA.

There is no point trying to track anything other than macros because the brand label entries in CRDB on which I have to rely in so many cases mostly do not give the extra data. Also, I am forced to use my phone to scan bar codes and then photograph the nutritional information on the pack for so many things because they are not present in the existing databases, which I find a stressful process. I far prefer to use Cronometer on my computer using a proper keyboard, mouse and 40" monitor rather than struggling with a phone. When weighing things in the kitchen, I write everything down on a piece of paper and then go to my study and enter them using my computer, because even the extra stair climbing involved in doing this is faster than struggling with the phone!

I usually get 95% daily but because I'm at a caloric deficit.

Wondering if other people here have ever achieved the elusive 100%

Ok, I have to ask because I almost hope I am not alone. So I really have a tough time drinking enough water or more accurately any liquids during the day. I may have a cup of coffee once a day but not much else. Like not even juice or sodas which also means my water intake is also very low but when I do it’s my go to after coffee but just seem to skip drinking much.

I know it can help with hunger as they say you could be thirsty instead of hungry cause you aren’t getting enough. But it seems I don’t really think about drinking anything in the day. Does anyone else have this issue and any tips!

I honestly can do plain water so taste isn’t the problem but just even thinking about getting enough liquids or water is!

I moved (as a paid subscriber) to Cronometer from MFP over a year ago and love it - it’s so much more reliable and accurate. I know Cronometer folk often linger here, so here’s a suggestion for you…

The one thing I really miss from MFP is the search/suggestion function. When you logged a frequently used / ‘favourite’ food, it would appear in a list among the things you generally log it with, so you could log multiple items at once. For instance, a search for ‘peanut butter’ in your favourites might also suggest ‘wholemeal bread’ if that’s what you usually eat it with. It is a pain having to do each search separately. Cronometer folks: any chance of making this smarter?

I know there are fixed and ratio options but I want protein and fat to stay at a fixed number and then I want carbs to make up the rest of my calories. Is there a way to do that?

Ive been using cronometer for over a year but recently ramped up the amount of exercise I’ve been doing and haven’t been seeing the results I’ve been expecting. I think because cronometer adjusts to include my activity so I’ve still been in the same defecit.

How do I change the settings so that my calorie target is 1800 calories? I still want my watch activity to show up in the app but just not count towards how much I can eat in a day.

I tried looking up in this subreddit but couldn’t find a straightforward answer, I’m not great with technology so pics would help. Thank you!