Totals are not in synch with individual food information
 

I have been baffled by my nutritional profile recently, so I manually added my potassium, sodium, calcium and vitamin E. All four of them were different from the totals of the foods entered. Potassium, which should have been 12%, is 9%; sodium, which should have been 2%, is 4%; calcium, which should have been 33%, is 28%; vitamin E, which should have been 1%, is 2%.

I could understand if, for example, there was "rounding off"; however, there was sodium in only one item. It was listed in the item as 2%, but on my total nutrition as 4%. And Vitamin E, listed in the single item as 1% has become 2%.

Also, I could understand if the total nutrition tables were adjusted for my particular caloric requirements rather than the FDA standard of 2000 calories; however, that does not explain why some numbers go up, and others go down.

Could someone please explain the methodology to me?

Potassium NOT being tabulated correctly
 

JUST A COMMENT ON YOUR OBSERVATION:

I also just manually entered potassium supplement data. Each tablet provides 3% which is how I entered the info into FitDay.

But when I watch the calculations, they don't combine together in increments of 3%. i.e. 3, 6, 9, etc.

I've also noticed this problem with Vitamin A and something else.

Apparently, FitDay cares not about this bug in their system as they never responded to my email nor on this board that I can see.

SOOOooooooo. My advice is to consider the calculations in-accurate and more of a guide. Its not operating correctly.

I noticed the same thing today. That's actually the reason for posting a suggestion in a separate thread. It probably happens all the time, but it's not always visible. What happened to me today was quite blatant because I got 104% vit D, which is something that hardly ever happens (it's usually under 50%) and I didn't really eat anything I don't normally do, so I was trying to determine which miraculous food did that. Sure enough, none did... It's not like I drank a gallon of milk. The actual number couldn't have been more than 30% or so.

I noticed that adding up my potassium came to 3049 and the number listed on the table was 1779. that's considerably off. and creating custom foods doesn't allow for Pant. acid?

What I don't understand is that FitDay has neither responded to any of us nor fixed the problem. And I have read complaints about the same issue dating back to 2007. It would appear that they are "asleep at the switch"!

Presumably there is some very complex algorithm making assumptions about our "real" eating habits: for example, that we salt all of our food but forget to mention it; or that our extremely bad cooking skills reduce the level of potassium in (raw!) food but somehow magically create vitamin B 12. Perhaps some programmer is having a wonderful time playing with our heads.

Why does FitDay continue to ignore this issue? Perhaps we need to start a campaign of advertising this problem everywhere on the internet. That might get their attention…

Hi,

My name is Joe and yes, IBJoe means I work for Fitday.com

I'm the lead developer and I'd like to get to the bottom of this.

If we take, Vitamin C for instance.

There is the percentage of the Daily Allowance that is pre-supposed. That's just part of the Food. A custom food could claim that it contained 100% of the Daily Allowance of Vitamin C and that could be false.

So, there are the percentages that are stored with foods both built-in and custom that are never 100% correct.

Then separately there is the actual value of Vitamin C of that this supposedly correct food say, 75 milligrams, contains. Again, this number is essentially correct or false based on the accuracy of our database and the accuracy of custom foods defined by YOU.

Then as a third percentage there is the percetage of the Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) that this 75 milligrams represents.

Now, the RDA is sensitive to Age and Sex, so it's different for large segments of the population.

With that basis of understaning. Let's discuss some specific cases of foods ( built-in or custom ) and show some screen shots ... and have some geeky time with Fitday.

Sounds interesting IBJoe. While I don't depend on FitDay for nutritional balance information because of oddities like those mentioned, it would be nice to be able to track it better, especially for those trying to tweak their diet towards certain vitamins or minerals to see if it makes a difference in their particular health conditions. For me, I'm watching chromium and manganese in particular at the moment.

It would also be nice to be able to have a shared database of custom foods (this is the only thing I like about MyFitnessPal that you don't do better at FitDay - it'd be nice to have access to items that other people have already entered... and if there are multiple entries that are identical, it could be treated as "verification").