Snapkin

Snapkin is a calorie tracker built on one observation. People do not quit calorie trackers because the numbers are wrong. They quit because the logging is work. Weighing rice, scanning barcodes and picking the right oatmeal out of a list of fourteen takes a few minutes a meal, several times a day. Almost nobody keeps that up past the second week. Snapkin asks for one thing instead: a photograph of the plate. It does the rest itself.

Photograph a meal. Snapkin names what is on it, works out the portions from the plate and the knife and fork beside them, counts the fat it was cooked in, and adds the result to the day. Where it isn't sure, it asks one question about whatever would change the number most. It writes the answer down as one plain sentence you can read, edit or delete. So it asks less about your kitchen every week. It puts protein first. When you eat less than you burn, protein decides how much of the weight you lose is fat and how much is muscle. The estimate is never dressed up as a measurement. The app shows what it assumed and lets you correct it. The published evidence, including the studies that argue against tracking, is written up in full on the Snapkin website.

Snapkin is made by Robot Studios, an independent software company in Belgium. It is paid for by the people who use it: €9.99 a month or €99.99 a year. One subscription, no free version and nothing extra to buy later. There's no advertising, no analytics and no tracking anywhere in the app or on the website. Food diaries are not sold, not shared with advertisers and not used to train anybody's AI. Everything can be deleted from inside the app in a few taps. It runs on iPhone and Android in 10 languages.