Comparison of 2 promising nutrition tracker (Macros and Food Tracker)

Plugins ideas
1

Hi everyone,

I’m looking to track my eating habits for two main reasons:

  1. To better understand my fat and sugar intake and use trend data as motivation to gradually improve my diet.
  2. To identify patterns between what I eat and any physical symptoms, in order to spot possible intolerances.

Right now, there are two plugins that look promising for this:

  1. Macros
  2. Food Tracker
    (The “Food Diary” plugin seems very basic in comparison, with far fewer features.)

Even though both plugins already exist, I think this still fits best under the “Plugin Ideas” section — hopefully that’s the right place for it.

Below, I’ve listed the features I’d like to see in a food tracking tool, and how I think each plugin currently handles them. If I’ve missed anything, please correct or add to the list.

Features I’d like:

  • Meal timestamps:
    To link meals with symptoms, I need more than just daily nutrient totals — the exact time of consumption is also important.

  • Symptom tracking:
    Ability to log symptoms and analyze them alongside meals. The analysis itself could be done using AI, so the plugin doesn’t need to provide that functionality — it just needs to make symptom logging possible.

  • Nutrition database integration:

    • Multi-language support.
    • More than just macros (protein, fat, carbs) — e.g. also calories, fiber, sodium, sugar.

  • Barcode scanner:
    If a food isn’t in the database, scan its barcode to pull in nutrition info. Many mobile nutrition apps already offer this.

  • Past-days visualization:
    Graphs or charts showing eating patterns over time.

  • Fluid intake tracking.

  • Custom default portion sizes.

  • Export option:
    Export per-meal nutrient totals to CSV so the data can be used elsewhere — e.g. combining it with symptom tracking for AI analysis to find possible links.

Feature Macros Food Tracker
Meal timestamps No — daily totals only. No — daily totals only.
Symptom tracking No, but since it’s open .md format, you can add symptoms manually in the files. Analysis would be up to you. Same as Macros — you can manually add symptoms in .md files, but there’s no built-in analysis.
Nutrition database integration Fat Secrets API (paid for researchers, free version here).
Multi-language: No (English only, no local products).
Extra nutrients beyond macros: No		 OpenFoodFacts (free community project, may have some inaccuracies).
Multi-language: Yes (includes many local products).
Extra nutrients beyond macros: Yes — also tracks fiber, sodium, sugar.
Barcode scanner No No
Trend visualization Yes — very nice. No
Fluid intake tracking No No
Custom default portion sizes Yes — works very well. No — must manually enter amounts for every ingredient/food (time-consuming).
Export function No No

My takeaway

Macros — Pros:

  • Beautiful visualizations for both daily totals and trends.

Macros — Cons:

  • Only English-language foods/meals in the database.

Food Tracker — Pros:

  • Clean, minimal interface; leverages Obsidian’s built-in features.

  • OpenFoodFacts database seems more promising:

    • International community project
    • Multi-language
    • More detailed nutrition info

Food Tracker — Cons:

  • No trend graphs.
  • No custom portion sizes.

Questions to Food Tracker:

  • Why use tags? Isn’t that an outdated approach? Wouldn’t using properties be more future-proof?

What’s missing in both:

  • Meal timestamps
  • Symptom tracking
  • Export function

Nice-to-haves:

  • Barcode scanner
  • Fluid intake tracking
2 Likes
2

It’s very hard to track your food.
I suggest something like Cronometer that has the most reliable database.
and then you can just export the data to Obsidian.