FoodayEating out and sharing dishes: how to log a family-style meal
To log a shared meal, photograph the whole table once, then count only your share of each dish: divide shared plates by the number of people and leave out dishes you didn't eat. In Fooday, every dish has a "Who ate it?" choice that does this for you.
Why shared meals are hard to log
Most calorie apps assume one plate, one person. Real meals often aren't like that. Dim sum, hot pot, Korean barbecue and family dinners put many dishes in the middle and everyone takes a little of each.
When we scanned one dim sum table in Fooday, the AI found 11 separate dishes, from shrimp dumplings to fried fish balls, with about 835 kcal for the whole table. Nobody at that table ate all of it.
Log the table, then split it
- Snap the whole table before anyone starts eating.
- For dishes everyone shared, choose how many people shared them. Two people sharing a 380 kcal plate of fried rice means 190 kcal for you.
- For dishes you didn't touch, mark them as someone else's. They stay in the photo but don't count towards your calories.
- For your own plate, leave it as yours.
In Fooday these are the three choices under "Who ate it?": Me, Shared (2 to 6 people) and Someone else.
Quick tips for eating out
- Ask for sauces on the side when you can; they hide a lot of calories.
- Fried and oily dishes add up fastest, so it's worth splitting them.
- Restaurant portions are often larger than home portions; check the portion size before saving.
To check individual dishes or ingredients, USDA FoodData Central lists nutrition values for thousands of foods.
The bigger picture
One heavy dinner out doesn't define your week. What matters is the pattern, and a diary that includes your social meals gives you a truer picture than one that only has the easy ones. For general guidance on a balanced diet, see the WHO healthy diet fact sheet.
Calorie values here are AI estimates from photos and can be wrong. Fooday is not medical advice.