Wish it worked. – Healthy Recipes - SparkRecipes Review

C’mon Spark People app developers! The main Spark People tracker app is great and it works and this app could be the ultimate companion app (allegedly integrated with the SP app), with some stability fixes and tweaks. There are lots of basic calorie trackers and recipe apps. The value of this app is in being able to enter your own recipes into it and to have it calculate all the nutritional info. I couldn’t find any other app that does this but what really makes it awesome is idea that your nutritional info ports right into the Spark People app—- IF IT ACTUALLY WORKED. Make this app work! Here are the things you need to fix: First, why isn’t there a barcode scanner for your recipe ingredients? The Spark People app lets just scan things in. If you can do it there, why not here? Being able to scan an ingredient and have all its nutrition info populate the recipe entry is just so obvious. As it is, we have to enter ALL the nutrition info for each ingredient manually. Also, searching the database for regular grocery items that come up on the regular SP app with nutritional info doesn’t work at all here, so even without a scanner, you have to enter in almost all your food items manually anyway. (This has been true for every item I’ve added to a recipe.) In this day and age, it’s ridiculous not to be able to just scan your Ingredients into a recipe app or get something in a search result. We know it’s possible to scan it in. We do it on the SP app. Make that happen! Second, others have noted, you can enter your whole recipe in and save it and BAM! It’s just GONE. All that work for nothing. I’ve entered recipes 2 and 3 times, only to have the same thing happen over and over. Once I saved one and it was there for a few minutes, sitting in my Favorites list, but I left the app and then went back and it was nowhere to be found. If I enter all this again, it will be the 5th time, and I’m not just talking about entering the ingredients, but ALL the nutritional information for each ingredient. Do you guys realize how much time it takes to have to do this? (But you could fix this by having a WORKING BAR CODE SCANNER embedded in the app.) Make the save function actually save the recipe! Third, integration of the Spark People app and the Spark Recipe app. The one time my recipe did save, I went to export one serving to the Spark People app to record it and it didn’t do anything at all. It took me to the SP app but the item was not in my meals for the day. Fix that so that we can track things we cook easily. It also needs to be saved in the Recipes tab in the SP app, as its supposed to. The whole point of this app is integration with the SP app. If it can’t do it, then it’s just another boring recipe database app. I know people complain bitterly about the ads but if you fixed the app, you could offer a paid version. (One time payment, not a hostage-taking subscription service.) But even if you stick with the ad based model, ads don’t make money if people won’t use app because it doesn’t work. You have a potentially great app here, one that could bring more users to Spark People if you just fix this stuff and make it work.
Review by NOLA Gurl on Healthy Recipes - SparkRecipes.