AI Calorie Counter: ParrotPal 17+

This appears to be a very new app, but you can tell that it’s incredibly well thought out, including the support model behind it (with companion videos and podcast episodes).

This is pretty much exactly what I’ve been looking for, an app that tracks your calories by just speaking what you ate. The relatively minimalist, text-message-like interface is also brilliant, as it makes it so quick to track any meal, I find I’m much more likely to do it than I have been in the past with other apps, where I need to do a lot of searching and selecting to track different items. I really hope this breaks through all of the many other diet apps out there, as it very much deserves to have a spot at the top.

Hi Walt

Thank you for the review. It's exactly what we made it for!

We've been in the health & fitness game for many years, and we have built apps before, so this new app is the accumulation of all of that.

We asked ourselves what would an app look like that focuses on weight loss without the overwhelm? How would an app look like if it was more conversational vs entering 100s of data points? How can we help users understand what to do and get them motivated every day? What are the key metrics that matter, and what if we followed the "addition via subtraction" way of thinking?

So after a lot of testing this is the result. We will continue to deliver daily podcasts for app users which shares insights into studies, behaviour change, motivation, Stoicism and so much more.

If you ever need support you can email us support@parrotpal.com and make sure to join our support Whatsapp group! (Found at the bottom of settings).

And one more thing, we've just launched our "custom meal plan generator". So you can get a meal plan made for you tailored to your goals and preferences.

Good luck Walt! Keep it up

it kept getting the calorie and protein counts wrong. I was trying to enter the food I’d had for today by going through my current calorie tracking app and texting it into this app. Every entry I did it got the nutritional info incorrect, and on my current app the nutritional info is straight from the foods nutritional label, so my current app has the right info. I think maybe I eat too many weird diety foods and maybe they’re just too specific. This app probably works great if you eat non-specific regular food? For example I was trying to log my Mission zero net carb tortillas, which have a very different calorie count compared to regular tortillas, and it would recognize it as just regular tortillas and the calories were double what they should be. I was able to tell it the correct calorie count and it did update it to reflect that, but this created a separate entry so now I had entered two different entries, and, what if I hadn’t known that the calories were incorrect? I’d be thinking I’m eating way more than I actually am.

This was enough for me to give up on the free trial, but I do think it’s a fantastic idea and I really look forward to its evolution. I may try it again in the future when there have been some updates and developments with it. You’ve definitely got a borderline genius idea on your hands here and you’re probably going to get really far with it, especially if you keep listening to people’s feedback and updating with that in mind.

Hi

You can search for the food via the verified food database or simply barcode scan it, and it will take the information from the labels directly. If you text/voice it in, you'd need to mention the serving size also or you even voice log and say " mission zero net carb torillas which are 100 calories per tortilla" (example here, it may not be 100) and it would log it for you accurately then

So for very niche brands that come in packaging, please use the barcode scanner. If you are eating generic foods, then the AI type/voice is best. Or if you're eating out, simply explaining the dish the best you can, would track it accurately.

Thanks for testing us out! We really appreciate the feedback and we're always making tweaks based on our users :)

But just to reassure have all the features apps like MFP have (manual food search + barcode) but all the foods included are verified, unlike the user added entries of MFP. So we have the function of all the best traditional tracking apps + our own AI entry which makes us overall a better tool we think! We hope to see you back soon

This is probably the easiest calorie counting food tracking app I’ve ever used. Literally takes seconds for you to input the information via voice memo just so easy it’s great. However, it only will track the calories and the protein. I know they say the most important macro as far as losing weight, but somebody who’s truly trying to dial-in to the macro nutrients also needs to know the carb count and the fat count. Once this is all collectively put together and trackable I wouldn’t hesitate to purchase this app however, I just need a little bit more.

thanks for your review! We will be adding carbs, fat and fiber to track soon as an option to turn "on". But for most people tracking 3 to 5 things is hard and doesn't become consistent, only an extra stressor. For fat loss, no diet is better when the diets have the same calorie and protein intake. So the mix of carbs/fat is really up to your eating preferences. The less limitations the better, but we understand people want to know the intake regardless so it's in the pipeline :)