Describe a meal in words

How does describing a meal work?

Say or type what you ate, the way you'd tell a friend. For example: "two scrambled eggs cooked in a teaspoon of butter, a slice of whole-wheat toast and a black coffee." SeeMeEat turns that into a draft entry, and you review and edit the draft before logging it.

Nothing is logged from the description alone. The draft is a starting point, and you decide what goes into your journal.

When is describing better than a photo?

When you know more than a camera can see. A description works well when:

• You measured the amounts, such as a cup of rice or two tablespoons of peanut butter.
• Something is hidden, like the oil in a pan or the sugar in your coffee.
• There's no photo, because you've already eaten or the meal was on the go.
• The meal is simple, with a few foods you can name exactly.

For a full plate you haven't measured, a photo estimate may be the quicker start. You can use whichever fits the meal. At a restaurant, name the dish and everything that came with it, such as bread, sides, sauces and drinks, because those extras are easy to forget when you log later.

How do you get a better draft?

Give the details that change the calories most. Research shows people are poor judges of amounts by eye: in a survey run alongside Google's Nutrition5k study, non-experts misjudged the weight of food on simple plates by 53 percent on average. People also tend to underestimate big meals, and in a 2013 study of fast-food diners, adults guessed 175 calories low on average.

So the more specific you are, the better the draft:

• Amounts: "1 cup," "2 slices," "a 6-ounce steak."
• Cooking method: fried, grilled, baked or roasted.
• Fats and extras: oil, butter, dressing, sauce, cheese.
• Drinks: milk in coffee, juice, soda, alcohol.
• Brands or restaurants, when you know them.

What happens to your voice?

On iPhone, dictation runs on the device. Speech audio is not part of journal sync, so your synced journal holds your entries, not recordings of your voice.

How many descriptions can you log?

As many as you like: SeeMeEat Pro includes unlimited meal descriptions, and unlimited photo scans too. The price is $1.99 a month or $9.99 a year in the United States, with local prices shown in other storefronts before purchase.

Food search, barcode lookup, label reading, manual entry, favorites, exact repeats and AutoLog are included as well.