I recently started Weight Watchers, because for the longest time I was gravitating away from healthy foods, and just "getting my calories". I needed a goal of fruits/veg, dairy, vitamins, etc, and one thing I can say that WW has over MFP is while their points system is too restrictive, the idea of having check boxes (and a smiley face when you get enough) for key food groups is VERY helpful.
Sometimes we need little reminders, and I actually was double logging, once on here, and once on WW. Since this is obviously not the cost of WW, I will never give this up, but I would LOVE LOVE LOVE if much like our water consumption tracker, that "reminds" you by its existence in the first place, it would be duplicated for fruits and vegetables, dairy, exercise, MULTIVITAMIN and so on an so forth.

They don't even HAVE to be used, they could just be there for those who CHOOSE to use them.

I would really love that and I would cancel my WW this very second and tell even more people about MFP. (I already got a couple people on here!)

Thanks!

I like the idea of counting fruit as fruit and such. The problem is, many people that enter food into the database are idiots and will probably start adding apples as 'meat' and chicken as 'grains.'

I too did WW and loved the smiley face when you reached the amount of fruits & water consumed. I had to give it up though do to cost. Something like that on here would be awesome!

Wll the good thing is the "checkboxes" are really only for reference. They don't actually apply to your total, but are your guidelines that you can reference quickly. For some reason just seeing that I have 5 fruits and vegetable slots that I should fill makes me more likely to pick an orange over a dove chocolate square....but I'm like that. =)

Anyway it wouldn't have anything to do with the database, and if you eat an orange, it wouldn't automatically add a fruit to your checkboxes, you'd have to do that yourself. I agree, when it comes to custom entries and user submitted entries, that opens the possibility for errors, not to mention the programmers at MFP having to go back through thousands and thousands of entries of their own and adding a value. Thats a lot to ask.

You couldn't get the smiley face, but you could use MFP to track your fruits and vegetables in the manner you are asking for. Instead of tracking meals, simply name your meals as "fruit", "vegetable" and anything else you want. When you eat one, add it to that slot.

For example, if you have an apple, a cup of green beans and some tuna for lunch. Add the apple to "fruit", the beans to "vegetable" and the tuna to whatever other group you find appropriate. Then you will know how many of each you've eaten.

If there are people like that, you can't help them. You can't fix stupid.

I like this idea a lot. While I like to think I'm healthy and don't overeat on junk, I have trouble choosing to have veggies along with my protein shake. I'm sure having a 'counter' for fruit and veggies, if done in a cute sort of way, would make me more likely to log them. It's like having a fun way to log them gives me an incentive to eat them more often. Which sounds more like something you'd do for a kid and not an adult, but what can I say, I know what works for me :P

I know exactly what you mean , it's having that visual is sort of like a reminder and a challenge at the same time to meet that goal for the day..(in January my company had a company-wide challenge where they provided us w/ a website and the goal was to record and maintain 5 healthy habits thru out the course of the challenge, which was
1. eat w/in 2 hours of waking up
2. Eat 3 grains
3. Eat combination of 5 Fruits/Vegetables
4. 5 Glasses of water
5. No after dinner eating (or at least 3 hours before bedtime)
(and we had to check off this box for excercise goal of 1 hour each day)

And it provided it to you visually and each time you completed something it would highlight, I really did not think this would do anything for me when I started...but it became almost like a challenge, and before I knew I started having much better habits, and really got me back on track for watching what i eat and started building back my working out routine. Althogh my weight is comming off very slow, but I do see the difference on how I feel as a whole. So with all that said I really can relate. MFP has come a long way , I remember registering years ago, and was very frustrated by it...and when I decided to log back in w/ MFP in sync w/ my work challenge , I have noticed that this site has improved sooooooo much...I am glad I am back on it. Hopefully they will consider adding this in the future

I third the suggestion on the fruit/ veggies idea. I want to eat healthier this will help me a lot to know I am eating to little fruit and to much meat etc. I think if enough of us pull together and suggest it maybe they will do it.

That's a good idea! Although it still doesn't cover the "suggestion" part that I'm sort of looking for. But I do think that you've come up with a good alternative for the meantime! =)

This is a great idea!

Make a chart for your fridge with smilies/stickers/gold stars!

haha - yeah but the whole idea is the "electronic" way of doing it. I mean, in that case I could not use MFP at all and just use a notebook =)

Besides, I would put stickers on everything. ;-)

I like this idea very much - just like the glass for the water, another symbol for fruit/vegetables, that would be great!

It would be great to have a little clicky button like with the water that just ups the number each time you click on it to say you've had some fruit or veg. :) I never have a problem hitting at least my 5 a day because i LOVE fruit and veg, but I would still like to have a clicky button like the water one - there's something very satisfying in seeing that number go up. :)

Heartsbeatback.org tracks the vegetables and fruits and inspires you to vary the colors. Check it out. It is web only not mobile though.