{"id":676484,"date":"2026-01-05T23:51:45","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T23:51:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/676484\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T23:51:45","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T23:51:45","slug":"garmin-adds-food-and-nutrition-logging-to-connect-worth-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/676484\/","title":{"rendered":"Garmin Adds Food and Nutrition Logging to Connect+: Worth It?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"YouTube<\/p>\n

As expected by leaks over the holidays, Garmin has announced food and nutrition logging to Garmin Connect. Or rather, more specifically, their paid platform, Connect+.<\/p>\n

The feature largely replaces the functionality long provided by MyFitnessPal, which allowed for food logging on the MFP platform (including scanning foods and a food barcode database), and then that\u2019d sync over to Garmin Connect. In this case, all of this is done within the Garmin Connect app, as well as Nutrition widgets on some watches.<\/p>\n

To be clear, the existing MyFitnessPal integration continues to work. They offer a basic free option, but in order to get food scanning, you\u2019ll need their premium tier, which runs $80\/year (unless you were grandfathered in on a free plan from last decade). So basically, you get that feature within Garmin\u2019s cost of $69\/year, plus Garmin throws in a free golden star for your profile picture<\/a>. So, there\u2019s that for you.<\/p>\n

With that, let\u2019s dive into things with a quick look at the food logging pieces, and how it integrates with your calorie burn data from Garmin devices (which is sorta the whole point here).<\/p>\n

Initial Setup:<\/strong><\/p>\n

First up, I\u2019ll assume you\u2019ve got Garmin Connect+ already enabled on your account. To be clear, this is a Connect+ feature, and thus you must have that enabled. If not, it\u2019ll offer to help you subscribe.<\/p>\n

Once that\u2019s set, in the app you\u2019ll go to More > Health Stats > Nutrition. Alternatively, you can add a widget to your Garmin Connect Home Screen under the \u2018At a Glance\u2019 portion.<\/p>\n

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Once you open this up, if you have MyFitnessPal activated, it\u2019ll disconnect that integration entirely. This is notable because it also whacks any workout data sharing with MyFitnessPal. It\u2019s not clear to me if I can re-establish that for only workout data or not, maybe I\u2019ll try later. Also notable is that MyFitnessPal is kinda an old backdoor way to sync other weight scales into Garmin Connect. So this kills that too.<\/p>\n

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In any case, from there, it\u2019ll ask you some bits about your goals here, along with confirming your stats. If you\u2019ve got a Garmin Index scale<\/a>, it\u2019ll automatically pull in your weight for you. Obviously, I enjoyed \u2018relaxing\u2019 during the holidays. But, back at it already. You can change all of these details, I just left them mostly as-is, though I increased the weight loss per week up to 0.5kg (1.10lbs), which given how much I work out, will be pretty easy.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019ll then summarize all this information and confirm the plan is set up:<\/p>\n

\"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

From there, it\u2019s time to start logging things.<\/p>\n

Daily Logging:<\/strong><\/p>\n

At this point, it\u2019ll be pulling in your data from your Garmin devices, while concurrently waiting for you to populate food\/nutrition data into the app.<\/p>\n

You can do this from one of two places:<\/p>\n

1) Your watch (limited subset of features, but it exists)
2) The Garmin Connect smartphone app, within the Nutrition feature<\/p>\n

When you go to your smartphone, you can access that Nutrition feature from a few different spots, including both the main page if you add a glance, or down into the Health menu.<\/p>\n

Once opened up, you\u2019ll see your live Calories & Macros at the top (also note the 1-day\/7-day\/4-week\/1-year options), and then below that a daily timeline that\u2019s divided up into Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, with the hours of the day as well.<\/p>\n

\"\" \"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

Note that you can tweak these windows in the settings (upper right corner) if you\u2019d like.<\/p>\n

\"\" \"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

Also notable in there, you can change the country you\u2019re scanning foods in. This is *SUPER* important if you\u2019re traveling outside your home country as defined in Garmin Connect. Note that this won\u2019t change the rest of your Garmin Connect settings, but unless you change it, absolutely nothing will scan. Trust me, I tried. In my case, my Garmin account is set for United States, but I live in Spain. Initially, not a single food was found when the barcodes were scanned. However, once I changed it, every single food I could scan in my fridge and cabinets, except for a container of eggs, was found (thankfully, the easiest possible thing to know stats on). I\u2019d argue that Garmin could have some logic that knows based on the phone\u2019s current location that it should ask\/suggest to switch to a different country\u2026<\/p>\n

In any case, let\u2019s look at food scanning\/adding. Next to each meal chunk (breakfast\/lunch\/dinner), there\u2019s an option to add a food. When you tap that you get into a menu that has:<\/p>\n

\u2013 All recently logged foods (for quick access)
\u2013 Favorite foods
\u2013 My foods (things you\u2019ve manually created based on knowing exact values)
\u2013 My meals (entire meals you\u2019ve created with a collection of foods)
\u2013 Scan food (upper right corner)<\/p>\n

You can see these here, with one of them opened up:<\/p>\n

\"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

The main ones are pretty self-explanatory, noting that you can tweak serving amounts. However, let\u2019s scan something instead. When you do that, you\u2019ve got two options: Scan the food, or scan the barcode. Starting off with scanning the barcode, I went through my kitchen and scanned just about everything I could find. Almost everything scanned without issue, and in under 1 second. Super fast. Note below you can select the serving size, by weight or portion, depending on the product. It then shows the full details of that portion down below.<\/p>\n

\"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

The only one that didn\u2019t work was this package of eggs. In which case, it just says tough nuggets. However, you can then manually add that if you want to. For some products that\u2019s easy enough with a nutrition label on the outside, whereas others might require a bit more work.<\/p>\n

\"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

The other way to add products is by taking a photo of it. In this case, you can simply point the camera at something and take a picture. It\u2019ll try to figure out the weight of the product and find a match. Below, I had some bread from a bakery in the US that DesFit bought over last month (it was frozen). This isn\u2019t in a database, but did have a reasonably good guess on what it was:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if those calories\/macros are correct, but they probably are. I checked the weight of the slice I cut, which was slightly higher, but good enough. I thought it was funny that it also grabbed the pineapple that was in the background. But that was easy to de-select.<\/p>\n

\"\"\"\"\"\"<\/p>\n

Oh, and as a funny aside, later in the day I went to our local mini-grocery store, and just took a random picture of an entire shelf. Surprisingly, it got virtually everything:<\/p>\n

\"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

The only thing it mixed up is that barely visible package of brown stuff at the top, which is ginger (not mushrooms), but it\u2019d be very hard to tell with this wide of a shot and most of the package\/shelf blocking it. Crazy impressive (even if this has no practical use).<\/p>\n

With all that set, I added my breakfast items, post-14mi\/22km run recovery drink, and a lunch that I haven\u2019t quite had yet. All of which now shows at the top. Eventually, I\u2019ll add the few gel packets from my run in there too.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Also, by default, it won\u2019t account for your completed workouts\/activity in the calories, however, if you look in the settings, there\u2019s an option for that. Here\u2019s the before\/after screenshots of how that accounts for my run.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0\"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

Now, there\u2019s also the option to log items within the Nutrition app on your Garmin watch. I\u2019m running the most recent Garmin Fenix 8 public beta<\/a>, and while I can see this screen, it immediately crashes the moment I touch it. Though the very last try during my video up above, it finally didn\u2019t crash. In short, it basically lets you see a duplicate of the data above, and also lets you log foods that you\u2019ve already defined.<\/p>\n

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Finally, beyond the daily bits, you can also see summary data for the date ranges at the top. Obviously, I haven\u2019t been logging, and Garmin didn\u2019t include any screenshots of that in their announcement, so here are some empty ones to show you the general features:<\/p>\n

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With that, let\u2019s wrap things up.<\/p>\n

Wrap-Up:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Beyond that, Garmin says that Garmin Connect Active Intelligence tidbits will show up at the top of the Garmin Connect app, related to your nutrition pieces. Obviously, I\u2019ll push this to the extremes with substantial ice cream, to see how it reacts. Currently, it hasn\u2019t said anything about my nutrition, and is just focused on my long-run from today (which is fair enough).<\/p>\n

Now admittedly, while I had connected the MyFitnessPal feature up long ago (like, a decade ago), I don\u2019t generally do food logging myself. So I can\u2019t really compare side-by-side how these two companies compete in this space. For example, MyFitnessPal also includes meal planning aspects as well.<\/p>\n

Though, in terms of the core things I\u2019d want (quick adding my favorite foods\/meals, barcodes actually working, fast entry), this seems to check all the boxes. Obviously, from a price standpoint, it\u2019s not free, but it\u2019s at least competitive with MyFitnessPal. And, I\u2019d argue for the first time since launch of Connect+, at least adds a feature that makes for a mildly compelling case to subscribe to Connect+ if you were previously subscribed to MyFitnessPal.<\/p>\n

With that, thanks for reading!<\/p>\n

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