

Show HN: Meals/Feels - Log your meals and feels to spot food allergies - k33l0r
http://www.mealsfeels.com/

======
codebeaker
As someone who suffered for 7 years being treated for dermatitis when I had
chronic undiagnosed IgE
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immunoglobulin_E](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immunoglobulin_E))
issues, this looks perfect.

The effects of my _intolerances_ as they are referred to is that whenever I
ingest anything containing (almost 160+ other things) eggs, dairy, cereals,
fructose, vinegars, anything with Soy/Tofu, apple skin, tomato skin, yeast,
and over ripe bananas I have serious mood changes, not to mention GI issues,
and suffer with dermatitis on my face and arms. It is also characterised by
bloody boils deep in the skin in fatty (I'm 70Kg, 183cm and 13% body fat, so
that's relative) areas of my body.

This went undiagnosed for so long, that I never counted on a cure, and, in
fact there isn't a cure, my body has become allergic to those foods for some
reason, and _eventually_ it may be that my immune response subsides, and I can
once again enjoy them.

(Note about how thrilled I was to hear about Soylent, and then how dismayed
that they decided to hone in on the cheapest possible recipe, at the expense
of the "Pea" protein variant which might have been suitable for me)

I think the meals/feels app could make a difference to any hackers who take
the time to use it.

For anyone else, who thinks they may have allergies/intolerances similar to
mine, beware that topical allergy testing won't catch it, but a focused blood
panel for IgE response might. As far as typical reaction times go, GI disorder
can set in anything from instantly, to 24 hours later, and the effects on my
mood, and skin, etc have lead time of anything from 24-100 hours, and a
recovery time of as much as three weeks.

~~~
hacker789
> As far as typical reaction times go, GI disorder can set in anything from
> instantly, to 24 hours later, and the effects on my mood, and skin, etc have
> lead time of anything from 24-100 hours, and a recovery time of as much as
> three weeks.

That's wild. How on Earth did you zero in on your issue? Was it a case of
"literally nothing else would explain things, so I may as well get this blood
test"?

And what do you eat on a typical day?

~~~
codebeaker
Meat, rice, fish and salad (without dressing… vinegar and dairy based are
pretty much all you find anywhere; I eat a lot of olive oils and citrus juice)

Nothing indian (all creamy, milky), very few asian recipes (i.e no sushi, I'm
intolerant of the green stuff they roll it in), anything with coconut milk is
a decent start.

Most "egg replacement" for baking contains stuff that I just can't eat, so
anything baked is out of the question.

I was fortunate when I moved to Germany, my company's recommended doctor was
the only one I could find who spoke english, and he was a sports physiotherapy
specialist with a side training in homeopathy; for all that I believe it's
quack science, the holistic approach to "maybe you have bad skin because
there's something wrong somewhere else" was a valuable insight.

My health insurance paid the first €200 in blood testing (€50 basic panel, 150
wide panel), having established that there's no "cure", they won't insure the
condition any further, but that's OK.

------
k33l0r
This was our team's Rails Rumble 2013 entry.

More details on our blog: [http://blog.kiskolabs.com/post/64607343183/meals-
feels](http://blog.kiskolabs.com/post/64607343183/meals-feels)

------
tansey
Interesting. My PhD research is on precisely this topic-- nutrition diaries +
machine learning for identifying the effect of foods on people with chronic
illnesses, such as Crohn's or MS.

I think this site is a good idea. It'd be even better if you could add in
amounts and somehow standardize the entries. Even better still if you could
break foods down by ingredients.

Also, if you get a few users and want to have someone analyze your data in
super cool Bayesian ways, email me!

~~~
zen_boy
My girlfriend has Ankylosing spondylitis. The exact cause of the continued
inflammation is unknown. It has been hypothesised that the cause is a gut
bacteria feeding off of gluten/starch/sugar/etc.

We are super excited about trying out an elimination diet with Soylent, but
knowing the real possibility of placebo and other factors, such as stress, we
are trying to come up with a systematic way to measure the effect of Soylent
diet on the wellbeing.

Do you have any advice on how to go about conducting such a (food) experiment,
what and how to track things and anything else to consider? Thanks!

~~~
tansey
Unfortunately, it's pretty tough to do it as just one person. All of my models
assume you have a population of patients that are tracking their diets. With
one person, you probably are best off just tracking your foods, medications,
and how you feel (numerically, say [0,10] or something). Then after a while
you can do a regression based on how much of a given item you think you have
in your system.

------
lucisferre
Hypochondriacs everywhere rejoice.

Seriously though I think it's a cool idea, might try it myself.

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Throwadev
Does this do some kind of analysis to help spot what foods might cause
problems? That would be useful. Otherwise would this be any more useful than a
spreadsheet?

~~~
mhurron
This is way more web 2.0 than a spreadsheet and is just as hard to take to
your doctor.

Sounds like a winner.

~~~
Throwadev
I like your sense of humor, but that's kind of mean. This is decent for being
built at a hackathon. If the creators wanted to take thsi further I think
analysis would move it from "OK, but what good does it do me?" to "I might use
this to help find out what foods trigger my allergies/Chron's/etc."

------
iguana
I'm working on a personal analytics system that's very similar. My goal is to
track more horizontally, not just one aspect like diet. I really like what
you've done here, and I think the UI is very clever.

Some folks here are asking why this is better than a spreadsheet. For the same
reason that people use CRM instead of a spreadsheet. That, and you can obtain
time and location data passively.

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wj
Might be good to have landing pages directly targeted at people with Crohn's
disease, people on the diet of the month, etc.

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itbeho
This looks great. I kept a food diary on paper a couple of years back and
discovered a correlation to MSG and headaches. I remember a discussion about
food allergies here on HN a while back that I lurked on. I was surprised by
how many people seemed _angry_ that anyone might be sensitive to MSG. Keeping
a food diary helped me tremendously.

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langer
'feel' is a quality lacking from existing food trackers like MyFitnessPal.
While I'm not aware of having any food allergies, I track how I feel when I
train in the 'notes' box on MyFitnessPal so I can assess the impact of
diet/sleep/training volume on performance. This works for me and makes sense
in the context of food allergies.

Trying to spot an allergy also won't require the level of detail of
MyFitnessPal/similar so I like the stripped down interface.

------
timboisvert
Any chance you'd consider open-sourcing the code, or at least the horizontal
calendar portion? This would be incredibly useful in a number of applications.

~~~
angersock
It does look quite sharp.

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Deregibus
Cool idea, a couple notes after trying it out.

\- Despite the save and delete buttons being big and obvious I looked right
past them the first time I entered data and lost all of my entries. I expected
that it would just save automatically when the entry fields lost focus. \- A
12/24 hour time option would be nice. \- I somehow ended up with a duplicate
October 23rd. It went away when I refreshed the page.

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pallandt
I really like this, it's so easy to navigate and at the same time have a view
of the overall 'feels'.

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michaelchum
Wow this is awesome, I just recently started doing this but in my head, a lot
of intolerances and mild allergies can only be diagnosed by self testing. I
just discovered that I was gluten intolerant, and perhaps many more. This is
going to be quite useful, thank you so much!

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bybjorn
Hmm, should I see a list full of logged meals the first time I visit that
site?

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wittjeff
I have been wanting to create a tool like this for some time. I'm curious
about what (if any) data analysis you're doing. The general area here is
called lag sequential analysis.

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jmhnilbog
A third entry for that day's exercise level would be great, though difficult
to fit in as a rhyme. Meals/Feels/Wheels? Meals/Feels/Burnt Caloreels?

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hellopat
I'll use this. I have severe acid reflux and this might actually help me fix
my diet.

~~~
jonikorpi
I did most of the design for this app. I also suffer from bad acid reflux
right now, and designed this app for someone like me. :)

A year ago I figured out separate, gluten-based problems by using iCal in this
manner: log meals in blue, symptoms in red, see what I've eaten ~24 hours
before a red entry.

Right now this is a nicer and more focused version of iCal or a spreadsheet
for this purpose, but we're planning on adding some correlation analysis
similar to [http://skygazerlabs.com/wp/](http://skygazerlabs.com/wp/)

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ggchappell
A good idea. But it _very_ much needs a privacy policy.

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a8da6b0c91d
I thought negative reactions to food can take days to play out, and
potentially a week or two to completely resolve. People who are gluten
sensitive, for example, exhibit the immune reaction for weeks after exposure.
This application presents symptoms as tied to the day of consumption.

This is why some nutritionists talk about a strict 30 day elimination diet.
For 30 days eat nothing but completely innocuous foods: no dairy, eggs,
nightshades, vegetable oils, or grains. If two or three weeks in you feel a
lot better or certain symptoms have subsided, then you need to more
systematically try to find what the problem is.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
Even if things take days to pop up and/or go away you still need to keep track
of it. So even if you did you 30 day thing and felt fine and wanted to start
adding new foods, you still want to track it. This app doesn't tie symptoms to
consumption. It seems to just give you an easy platform to log what/when you
ate and how/when you felt. Patterns will emerge organically eventually. You
can speed that up by taking a systematic approach to what you eat. But you
still need to track it.

