Noom Observations, Part 1
A couple of months ago I got sick of my weight and decided to do something about it. I’d heard a lot of good things about Noom so thought I’d give that a try. Personalized, small goals, teaching strategies to lose the weight and keep it off, no meals I had to buy from them, blah blah blah. Sounded great.
So it’s July now and I’ve been using it since the end of January. I’ve lost over 60 pounds, over 21% of where I started, and I feel great. Some of it I’ll credit to Noom, some of it to me and determination. Noom does a lot of things well, but there are a number of limitations people should be aware of.
The Bugs
First of all, let’s talk about some simple stuff: software bugs. Specifically, data bugs. Their calorie database is wrong more than it’s right, which really sucks for an application that’s supposed to help you count calories.
Here’s just one example out of many.
I made Breakfast Tacos today. I scanned the bar-code on the tortillas to add to my breakfast. The right brand and description came up, but the calories were way off.
To the right here is the nutrition info from the back of the package of tortillas. Serving size is 2 calories, 90 calories per serving. Seems reasonable. I know I was just an English major but I think that works out to 45 calories per tortilla. I had 3 tortillas in my breakfast, so that’d be 135 calories, right?
Now, to the right is what Noom has in their database when I scanned the bar-code. Had the right brand and description, but 70 calories for 1 tortilla. Again, just an English major, but I’m pretty sure that 70 is nowhere near what I calculated above as 45 calories per tortilla. In fact, its 155% of 45.
Now, one could argue that it’s better that it is wrong on the high side so that I think I ate more calories than I really did, but 155% seems way off. Using Noom’s numbers for the tortillas my breakfast goes from 350 calories to 425 calories.
Also, one could argue that data changes, but so does packaging. Pretty sure this tortilla brand is more worried about the FDA calling them due to inaccurate packaging data.
There is also an item in the nutrition screen in Noom to tell them about a problem. I asked one of their advisors about it, too. They said they update the database quarterly.
I’ve been using this program and app since January and I’m pretty sure I reported the above discrepancy early on. Still wrong today. As are a number of other bits of nutrition info.
There are also times where you scan the bar-code of an item and it doesn’t even come up with the right item. Scan a package of egg whites (25 calories per serving) and it comes up with the same brand but their whole eggs (70 calories per serving), not egg whites. And that one I know I reported as an error back in January and it hasn’t been corrected yet here in July.
So that’s 180% off of the correct value. And way off on fat, etc.
So I’d say if you’re going to use Noom, watch their calorie counts carefully. Don’t freak out if it shows you having eaten way more than what the packages show you — double-check their work. You can enter calories directly for an item that’s wrong, too. Sadly, that only corrects it for that instance and if you scan the bar-code again, it’ll be wrong again.
I’d say report all of their errors to them, but they don’t seem to correct them, so that may be pissing into the wind.
More on other problems with Noom later.