Do you know how many calories a bowl of moong dal, Paneer sabji or two Chapatis consist? No. That’s because it’s not possible to keep the calorie count of the food we are eating. With the growing awareness about adopting a healthy lifestyle, Veer Ramlugon founded The Food Analysts, which is a human-powered calorie counting service. It helps one meet fitness goals through constant monitoring and get guidance on the food one consumes. A dedicated team of nutritionists are connected via WhatsApp, who work 24/7 to break up your meals and calculate unique ‘macros’ — proteins, carbohydrates and fats. Excerpts from an interview with Ramulgon...
How does The Food Analysts work?
The Food Analysts is the easiest, most effective and personalised food coaching service. The analysis is presented in the form of a report after calculating the nutrient content and directly shared with the user after s/he shares the pictures of their meals on WhatsApp. The report also includes the entire day’s analysis shared at the end of the day. This comes along with advices and suggestions that help you improve your nutrition. Macros are calculated based on the users’ physical status, goal and level of activity. The coach will guide exactly how much of proteins, fats and carbs are to be consumed daily to achieve the desired goal. In short, we tell you what’s in the food, the right portion and time of consumption of a particular food taking into consideration your lifestyle and fitness goals. You can sign up on the platform1 giving basic details such as age, weight, height, food habits and exercise routine.
Key features?
We don’t just suggest but educate you throughout your journey of transformation. You take control and ownership of what you like to eat not just for the duration of the programme but for good. We unite your choices and our suggestions that help you sustain healthy eating habits. Our suggestions, tweaks, meal improvement ideas and innovative recipe suggestions help you plan your meals, leaving you independent to make informed choices on food.
The best part is the level of personalisation. You always have the team around you 365 days, 24*7 to coach you, irrespective of your time zone (as we operate globally). Our team has a database of five million food items that have been tested in labs for their nutrients. We also use a verified nutrition database to help identify every possible food or meal, covering a range of nutritional values. This offers accurate assessment and takes nutrition services to the next level.
What was the thought behind launching The Food Analysts?
People have a challenging lifestyle, they work late, travel, eat out, have less time and resources to monitor their intake, and cannot have a personal coach to motivate, pamper, analyse, help, and guide them. We do exactly this. It has been set up to take the headache out of calorie counting and assisting you all day. Rather than having to manually input each meal or food item unlike other apps and services, we do it for you.
What must we remember while consuming our meals?
As the wise say, failing to plan is planning to fail. Not eating on time or skipping meals (especially breakfast) is going to take you nowhere, because starving is the enemy of fat loss. Splitting your meals throughout the day with proper nutrient distribution is important so that you don’t end up eating a lot in just one meal and eat less during the other. People should have the ability and freedom to choose their own food, no matter what the goal. It’s all about eating right food at the right time in the right quantities.
More Indians are now hitting the gym but are we taking our food habits seriously enough?
Indian foods are heavy on carbohydrates and fat. Once you try them, you get addicted. Today’s youngsters want to look good, they go to the gym but don’t realise that going to the gym is just 20 per cent of the equation. The rest 80 per cent is food. They eat chicken but the meat contains fat too. Hence, it is important to eat in the right amount.
How do you correct that?
India has tremendous potential when it comes to becoming fit and healthy. Indians are prepared to work for it; what they lack is guidance, motivation and dedication. The main challenge we see is misinformation and myths around food due to which we end up choosing the wrong route towards our goal. Other key challenges are time constraints due to travel, lifestyle and poor food choices.
