Why do I have 98% uncategorized calories?

[Kathleen7587]

Trying to understand/troubleshoot why my calorie counter would have 98% uncategorizes food when I checked that each item has full nutritional facts (I had blue apron meals that I entered as custom but entered all facts from calories to protein). I’m wondering if that is the issue, but what is the point of entering the details if it’s noted as uncategorizes anyways. Any way to help this? Thanks!!

Moderator Edit: Clarified Subject.

[MrMarv]

@Kathleen7587 - 

You are speaking of the Macro-nutrients calculation, correct?

So far I have only seen you state 2 of the 4 required entries to calculate those percentages.

You need four things:

1. Total calories for the item
2. Calories from fat
3. Carbs in grams
4. Protein in grams

The reason for this is that for the purpose of the calculation:

• 1 gram of fat equals 9 calories, because that is what takes to burn one gram of fat.
• 1 gram of carbs equals 4 calories
• 1 gram of protein equals 4 calories

Number 2 above gives calories from fat directly, while the other two allow the app and web food pages to calculate the calories for carbs and protein using the values in the bulleted list. Those three calorie values are totaled up and that total divided into each calorie value to determine each percentage of the whole. If there is a difference between the total calories just calculated and the calories stated as the total, the difference is declared as uncategorized.

Number 2 above is the most forgotten when it comes to entering custom foods, at least for me. I track the value in the individual ingredients my wife and I use in our home cooked items and they are totaled up. I just sometimes don't transfer them from the spreadsheet into the nutrition facts when creating the custom food. When I book meals and see the uncategorized calories statement, I first revisit my custom foods first.

It's not always custom foods, sometimes it is something that I scan and is in the Fitbit database and gets loaded. But the Fitbit foods database isn't perfect. And before anyone recommends getting the MyFitnessPal app and importing, MyFitnessPal isn't perfect either. In fact it isn't on any of my devices anymore. Why should I have to audit two companies' databases?

Anyway, I hope the above may have pointed you in the direction of tracking down those pesky uncategorized calories.

Feel free to post examples if you would like.

Good luck and welcome to the boards.

[Frenchprincess8]

Try using the barcode scanner to log instead of manually logging. Makes life easier anyway. 😁