Ask HN: Any open source or hackable food scales?

3 pointssail0rm00n2 comments

COVID has gotten the best of my weight gain and I want to work on a food tracking app using a scale. Any tips for already hacked scales?

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I can't help with your question directly, but if you're thinking of turning this into a business I'd caution that measuring foods isn't the hard part. I've been tracking what I eat for years using a food scale and it couldn't be simpler. There is a bit of friction to overcome when you first get started, but that goes away almost instantly.

The bigger problems are knowing what to eat and how much of it to eat.

And related to measuring, understanding how to measure it properly. Do you track it dry or cooked? And when you cook let's say a steak with a 1/4 inch of fat on it, but you don't eat the fat, how do you track that? And how do you track the oil you cooked it with?

Nutrio (https://www.aurora-nutrio.com) was doing the rounds on Twitter recently for being an utterly ridiculous product.

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