My calorie tracking app thinks my mom's dal makhani has 0 micronutrients and I want to throw my phone

Help/Suggestion

Been trying to track calories seriously for 3 months. Lost 4kg but I'm losing my mind with these apps.

Every day it's the same problem. I eat ghar ka khana — dal, sabzi, roti, rice, dahi. Normal stuff. But when I try to log it in MyFitnessPal or CalAI:

- "Dal" returns 47 different entries and none of them match what my mom makes
- Protein content for the same dish varies from 4g to 18g depending on which entry I pick
- I don't carry a kitchen scale to the dining table
- "Homemade sabzi" might as well not exist

The worst part is when I try the camera/photo feature. These apps were clearly trained on burger-and-salad data. My baingan bharta comes out as "eggplant salad" and it estimates 60 calories. My mom's baingan bharta has enough oil to fuel a car.

I've been manually building custom entries for 3 months like some kind of data entry intern for my own stomach.

Anyone else dealing with this? What are you actually using to track Indian home food accurately?

Posted Jun 11, 2026, 10:24 PM UTC

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