Tweetwhatyoueat just released CrowdCal, the Internet’s first crowd-sourced calorie database! Activate the CrowdCal setting and Tweetwhatyoueat will auto-fill uncaloried entries in your diary with matching calorie profiles submitted by other users.

Activate the CrowdCal setting

  1. Go into My Diary
  2. Turn Edit Mode “on”
  3. Click on Edit Settings link
  4. Check off the “Use CrowdCal profiles in my diary” checkbox
  5. Click “Update” to commit the change

note: the commit process may take up to two minutes when activating the CrowdCal setting for the first time.

Understanding CrowdCal entries

Once you activate the CrowdCal setting, Tweetwhatyoueat will attempt to auto-fill previously uncaloried entries in your diary with matching calorie profiles from the community. With the CrowdCal setting active, your diary will look something like this (minus the big pink A, B, and C):

food diary entries with CrowdCal setting enabled

Figure 1. My Diary with CrowdCal active

There are three distinct ways in which calories are displayed. The pink letters in Figure 1 above - A, B, and C - correspond to the descriptions below.

  1. Linked numeric value (A) - matching calorie profile(s) exist for this food. The highest ranked profile is displayed in-line in your diary. Click the calories to open the food profile dialogue with up to 10 calorie profiles from the community as well as your own.
  2. n/a (B) - There are no direct or indirect matching calorie profiles for this food.
  3. n/a ? (C) - There are two cases for this display scenario:
    • a new matching calorie profile was submitted since you first activated the CrowdCal setting. Clicking the “?” will open the food profile dialogue showing the new matching profile(s). Click a profile to retroactively assign the calories to all matching food entries in your diary.
    • there are no direct matches for this food in the database but there are one or more foods that may be similar. Clicking the “?” opens the food profile dialogue showing the alternate foods. Clicking a profile will apply its calorie value to your food entry.

Opening the Food Profile Dialogue

Clicking a calorie link, or “?” for n/a entries that have it, opens the the food profile dialogue showing all matching calorie profiles for that food.

Figure 2. food profile dialogue window

Selecting a calorie profile from the Food Profile Dialogue

Click on a profile in the dialogue to select it. Selecting a calorie profile inside the dialogue will retroactively apply its associated calorie value to all matching food items that you’ve previously entered. If you have multiple calorie profiles for the same food (each being identified by a “me” icon next to the profile in the dialogue), the selection will overwrite the individual entries for that food.

Food Profile Rankings

Profiles in the dialogue window are listed in order of rank. The highest ranked profile displays in-line in your diary. Profiles are ranked the following way (in descending order of precedence):

  1. Your profiles - any time you enter calories for a food, you’re creating a food profile that will be shared by the community. Food profiles that you’ve entered, or selected in the past, will always rank #1 in the Food Profile dialogue and will be designated with a “me” icon. It is possible to have more then one Food profile for a given food.
  2. Community profiles - Community profiles rank second to profiles created or selected by you. If there are multiple community profiles for a food, they are displayed in descending order based on the number of users using the profile.
Figure 3. “Me” profiles are the highest ranked, and appear ahead of even the most popular community profile as seen here. Figure 4. The highest ranked community profile is used when the CrowdCal setting is active for entries where you haven’t entered a calorie value.

The number of users using a given profile helps you determine how credible the calorie profile is within the community.

1 Response to “Crowd-source your calorie look-ups”

  1. ahaynes16 Says:
    This is soooooo awesome! Thanks TWYE :)

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