The Best Food Tracking Apps Of 2025, According To Dietitians

Different people use nutrition apps for very different reasons, from eating more regularly to optimizing performance. Clarifying whether your priority is eating more whole foods, diversifying your diet, staying consistent with a specific plan, or hitting body-composition targets will quickly narrow your options. The clearer your goal, the easier it is to pick an app whose features (like meal planning, macro tracking, or habit coaching) match what you actually want to change.

ZKSSGY Fitness Tracker with 24/7 Heart Rate Blood Oxygen Sleep …

Highly recommend for anyone wanting to improve their fitness. The Zeacool Fitness Watch is designed to help you stay on top of your health. It features a continuous heart rate monitor that tracks your heart rate, blood oxygen, and blood pressure in real-time, giving you insights into your physical condition.

It also includes a fasting timer to keep track of how long you’ve gone without food and show when you’ve entered ketosis, which is when your body starts burning fat for energy. The second thing is the premium plan, which isn’t cheap at $19.99 per month or $79.99 per year. While there is a free version, it’s quite limited and doesn’t allow you to use the barcode scanner or set your own macros. Comes up with a personalized calorie budget based on your height, weight and age. It also claims to be the “first weight management app to offer gender inclusivity in profile settings,” the company said in a statement. Perhaps you’ll notice on the days you skip a meal that you feel a little foggy and not totally on your game.

• Here are a few of the most important factors we look for when evaluating a nutrition app, which we used to assign scores and determine the top eight apps.
• But plenty of high quality fitness trackers are available, including options for women of all ages and experience levels.
• A wearable fitness tracker will monitor your steps and workouts, but using one alongside Fitbit’s app will help you take food tracking to the next level.
• Whether we ran, walked, or lifted weights, we found that the fitness metrics were accurate and helpful.
• With comprehensive health monitoring, you can effortlessly track your heart rate, blood oxygen levels, and blood pressure right from your wrist.
• However, you can also manually customize your calorie target.

Since joining GH in 2021, she has continued to leverage her extensive product reviews experience by staying on top of the industry’s latest innovations and helping readers make better buying decisions. Olivia is a graduate of the George Washington University, with a bachelor’s degree in journalism, political science and French, and she holds a master’s degree in communications from Sciences Po Paris. Compared to the slimmer Fitbit options, I personally thought the Whoop 4.0 was too thick and noticeable, but most testers did not share my sentiments.

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Here are a few of the biggest reasons you may want to consider using a nutrition app. Is this app easy to use, or do you need to watch tutorials to figure it out? Most people want something simple and easy to use without too much of a learning curve, so we prioritized apps that are very intuitive and easy. Carb Manager is a great calorie-counter app to try if you’re following the keto diet or simply want to reduce your carbohydrate intake. Anyone can add their own food entries, and there’s no way to tell if the one you’re choosing is correct. Some food entries will have a green checkmark to show https://www.forbes.com/health/wellness/best-calorie-counting-apps/ it’s been verified with a food database, but it’s still confusing.

Best Calorie-Counting Apps, According to Nutritionists

If you love exploring new routes, we recommend Polar Vantage’s M3 Smartwatch for its accurate GPS navigation, sharp display, and accurate metrics. During testing, we found it to be very sophisticated and accurate in its activity tracking capabilities, with dedicated screens and metrics for about 150 different sports and activities. Plus, we appreciate the seamless integration with third-party apps like Strava and other devices such as chest strap heart monitors, which allows for easy data sharing and analysis. It was very comfortable to wear at night and offered in-depth analysis and sleep improvement tips based on comprehensive data. The impressive battery life of up to eight days also makes it convenient for continuous wear. Plus, with guided meditations and breathing exercises in the app, this discreet device is perfect for incorporating more mindfulness into our daily routine.

Nutrition tracking works, here’s the proof

You can view results on your wrist device, phone, or tablet and export a PDF from the Fitbit app to your doctor. One thing that sets Garmin apart is that the cycle tracking can also be used by those transitioning into menopause. It has a water rating of 10 ATM, which means it can withstand pressure equivalents of up to 328 feet (ft), or 100 meters (m). While you can take it swimming or snorkeling, the company doesn’t recommend wearing it for scuba diving. From fat to protein to carbs, access personalized nutrition charts and dashboards to get a complete picture of your health.

Apple Watch Series 11

There are plenty of calorie counter apps to choose from, but we simply couldn’t include them unimeal reviews consumer reports all. Here are a few that came close, but didn’t quite make the cut. While it tracks all of your macros, the emphasis is on tracking carbohydrates, which is the most important thing to watch for anyone on the keto diet. The app uses net carbs, which subtracts fiber from the total carb intake, a strategy often followed by those on carb-restricted plans. Intermittent fasting, the practice of intentionally going without food for long periods of time, is a popular dieting approach that many embrace in their efforts to maintain a healthy body weight. Thankfully, the WeightWatchers app has features to support those on a weight loss journey, including thousands of recipes ready to log, earning a 5 out of 5 for its many features and recipes.

Healthline’s picks of the best calorie counter apps

Great value for those seeking a simple and efficient tracker. On the opposite spectrum of the Apple Watch Series 10, the Samsung Galaxy Watch 7 is exclusively designed to pair with Android smartphones. I didn’t receive any of these notifications (thank God), but did get detailed daily reports of my heart rate zones during workouts and nightly sleep cycles like all fitness trackers in this guide. After testing a dozen fitness trackers, the Fitbit Charge 6 won a gold star for its premium features at an affordable price point of just under $160 (and on sale at times for under $140). The price also includes a six-month membership to Fitbit Premium, which features a library of cardio and strength training workouts and a monthly analysis of 10 sleep metrics—that’s an easy sell!

Only the group that consistently tracked their food lost significant weight. Even if you aren’t focused on any particular weight goal, tracking your food is a great way to build food awareness and make good dietary choices. It’s no secret that the average American diet isn’t always the healthiest, so tracking your food, even for a short period of time, can be a good way to clean things up. Finally, an accurate nutrition database is tremendously helpful, especially for those new to nutrition and calorie counting.

If you count calories, macros, or micronutrients, you can count on us

All the fitness trackers on our list have heart rate tracking and sleep tracking, but each one has additional characteristics that you may find helpful. It tracks your weight and calculates a recommended daily calorie intake. While logging calories can be a helpful weight loss tool for some, it’s important to note that tracking food and calories can lead to unhealthy behaviors such as food obsession and disordered eating patterns.

Best Calorie Counter Apps: FAQs

Aside from heart rate, stress levels, period, fertility insights, and sleep are also tracked. Weight might not seem like a big deal, especially when you consider the small difference between a featherweight option like the Fitbit Charge 6 (30 grams) and a “bulkier” one like the Coros Pace 3 (39 grams). But when you’re wearing your fitness tracker all day, a heftier model becomes a lot more noticeable than you’d expect. Finding the right fitness tracker for women can be a challenge.

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If you’re looking for a free calorie counter app, you’re in the right place. Simply sign up for your free account here and start tracking your food. I’m not a fan of wearing a watch to bed, but this model is so lightweight (30 grams) and thin that I barely notice it. It provides a sleep score breakdown of all your cycles and whether or not it was optimal for recovery, which is especially helpful if you’re in the process of training for a race or going hard at the gym.