Allow negative food amounts
 

It would be nice if the daily food tracking section allowed the entry of negative amounts. Currently when entering a negative quantity of any food, I get the "One or more of the values you entered are invalid" message and cannot proceed until I remove it.

It would be good to keep negative numbers highlighted in red to distinguish them, but the site would be more useful if it didn't reject such entries outright.

Not sure I follow on how that could be useful? I guess I could say I ate -6 Krispy Kreme donuts yesterday, but I don't think that would help my weight loss any. :cool:

Regards,
Michael

See, I have this anti-matter butcher who sells black-hole raised antibeef, and when you eat it, it...

OK, actually, I have many custom foods which are complex recipes. Sometimes I substitute ingredients, and when I do that it would be far easier to enter a negative quantity for the supplanted item than to re-create the whole recipe.

Ah, I see, that makes sense, I guess. I've never tried it, but can you enter "0" or, say, ".01" or some very small number to accomplish the adjustment? I don't think entering a negative will ever be a feature, but you never know.

Regards,
Michael

food databases
 

I would like to be able to search for a food item and pull up the 'official' data base AND my custom foods--without having to toggle back and forth.

The FitDay PC software does this, FWIW (and it is VERY convenient!).

Regards,
Michael

Zero quantity doesn't really solve the problem, alas--for example, if I make Beef Stroganoff (custom food with 10 or more ingredients) but decide to substitute ground turkey for the beef, the most efficient way will be to log the stroganoff and the turkey as normal, then add in a negative amount for the beef I didn't have.

As far as the mechanics of making this work are concerned, the core of the food site's basically a giant spreadsheet with sums, and it almost certainly takes more coding to identify and reject negative numbers than it would to admit them to the calculation. If the existing detection algorithm led to a "negative quantity, are you sure (Y/N)?" confirmation dialogue, rather than a simple errormsg/halt, I'd think you'd have something like an ideal solution without much effort.

Hmm--I follow, and that makes sense. Too bad you don't have the FitDay PC version as custom recipes are a snap and you can edit them at will so having one with turkey and one with beef, for instance, would be no problem.

Personally, and I know it will throw your numbers off a bit, I'd simply reduce the amount of "beef" stroganoff I ate to adjust for the lower calorie version. I admit that I do this quite often as for me, the calories are most important. The nutrition part of the equation may be more important to you, and of course this would throw those number off as well.

Regards,
Michael