Comment by umangsh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by umangsh | Hacker News Reader

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Hi everyone, I’m the author of Famnom. I built it after trying various nutrition tracking apps but didn’t find anything that fit my needs.

What is it?

Famnom is an easy-to-use macro and micro-nutrient tracker, and meal planner. Choose from a database of foods or add your own, create recipes and log meals. Set custom nutrition goals or use FDA RDIs for macros - calories, fats, proteins, carbs and micro-nutrients - Magnesium, Calcium, Zinc, Iron, etc. Use MealPlanner to generate daily meal plans based on nutrition goals, available items and taste preferences. Sample user journeys:

Signup/Login: https://github.com/umangsh/famnom/blob/master/journeys/signu...

Search/Setup Kitchen: https://github.com/umangsh/famnom/blob/master/journeys/searc...

Nutrition Goals: https://github.com/umangsh/famnom/blob/master/journeys/nutri...

Mealplanner: https://github.com/umangsh/famnom/blob/master/journeys/mealp...

Why?

My main goal was to eliminate nutritional supplements in my diet, and use fresh foods and recipes as much as possible. Famnom can help:

1. Track macro nutrients and micro nutrients, such as Vitamin D, Fiber, Magnesium, etc consumed per day. Connect with Apple Health for trends over longer periods of time.

2. Generate meal plans based on available foods and recipes in Kitchen, nutrition preferences and taste preferences.

3. Share kitchens with other family members.

Famnom has worked for me personally. I was able to eliminate almost all supplements from my diet. I hope it can help others with their health goals.

Tech Stack:

Application backend code built using Django + Postgres. Deployed on Heroku. iOS and Android apps built with Flutter.

Web: https://www.famnom.com

Code: https://github.com/umangsh/famnom

iOS: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/famnom/id1583273562

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.famnom.fam...

Code: https://github.com/umangsh/famnom_flutter

You should copy and paste this "Why?" explanation onto the front page of the site to instantly multiply the number of signups.

I would also put an example account or dashboard so people can play with it to understand what it does before going through sign up work.

Another thing is the USDA nutrition info for raw ingredients might be actually a bit out of date, with a lot of the measurements taken long time ago. The actual micronutrient content of raw food can vary greatly depending on what kind of soil it was planted in, how unripe it was before harvesting and many other factors, which isn't shown in this kind of stuff unfortunately. And the quality of soil 30 or 40 years ago is probably radically different than it is now.

Your point about nutritional variability with location and time is valid. USDA periodically refreshes nutritional information for a variety of foods (https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/log.html) and provides location data for collected food samples. For tracking purposes, averages are a workable approximation imo.

I built kcal[0] after a similar search. The focus is primarily on macros and ultimately I kind of lost steam on developing further (though we still use it to great success). A part of why lost interest is that I didn’t like PHP + Laravel as much as Python + Django.

Anyway I see you have the Famnom code on GH but apparently not with an OSS license. Are you planning to seek contributions with a friendly license in the future? If so I’d be interested.

[0] https://github.com/kcal-app/kcal

I also have a similar project partially done but lost steam (eatplants.app). I always think I should just finish it to make it functional.

My thinking is that logging food is annoying (weighing and tracking food you ate). I want to make a more fluid way of just selecting recipes or food and encourage a more scalable/intuitive way of eating.

Looks like a cool project you’ve built there.

Absolutely open to contributions :). Didn't pay attention to licensing yet, will look at options.

Congrats on shipping!

Do you use linear programming / some other optimization algorithm to hit targets, or is it more like a deficit tracker where you tell it what you ate and it tells you that you need 8 more mcg of zink or whatever?

Thanks! MealPlanner generates suggestions through a constraint programming solver, taking into account any foods consumed earlier in the day. The home page tracker shows nutrient consumption (and deficits) for the day.

I am very interested in apps like this but a very small landing page with almost zero explanations or demos and immediately wanting me to sign up, is the best way for me to navigate away.

Either have a demo account with ephemeral in-browser storage so people can experiment, or allow people to experiment anonymously first.

Again, I am super interested and will make an account anyway but I have to tell you, your landing page is bad. You can improve it.

Noted, thanks for the feedback. A demo account would be useful.

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