Health · Fitness & Nutrition · 2 days ago
Calorie-counting apps can misidentify food and misjudge its calories
Calorie-counting apps use photos to estimate what is in a meal.
In a test, two apps gave incorrect calorie counts and misidentified some foods.
A nutritionist said this makes them unreliable for careful calorie tracking.
He also warned that constant tracking could cause stress or unhealthy eating habits.
Franceinfo tested two calorie-counting apps that use artificial intelligence to identify food from meal photos.
The test meal was chicken blanquette with carrot purée and rice, listed on its packaging as containing 307 calories.
One app estimated 340 calories but mistook the carrots for sweet potatoes, while the other reported 620 calories and incorrectly identified pork.
Nutritionist Raphaël Gruman said the apps were not suitable for rigorous calorie tracking and warned that they could contribute to stress or disordered eating.
A student interviewed in Toulouse said an app had helped him during his weight-loss journey, while another cautioned that its results were not fully accurate.
- Who
- Franceinfo; two students interviewed in Toulouse; nutritionist Raphaël Gruman.
- What
- A report tested the accuracy and potential risks of calorie-counting apps that analyze meal photos.
- When
- Published on 9 October 2026.
- Where
- Toulouse, Haute-Garonne, France.
- Why
- To assess whether calorie-counting apps reliably help people track food intake and lose weight.
This story does not have two clearly opposing sides.
Si on veut suivre de façon rigoureuse sa consommation de calories, ce n’est pas adapté
Ça peut servir, mais il faut être conscient que ce n’est pas précis à 100 %
This story does not have a timeline yet.
- Test meal calories on packaging
- 307 calories
- First app estimate
- 340 calories; it mistook carrots for sweet potatoes
- Second app estimate
- 620 calories; it incorrectly identified pork
- Annual subscription price mentioned
- 24 euros
- Weight reported by student Mohsen El Kara
- 84 kilograms, down from 99 kilograms a year earlier
Sources
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