The Camera Phone Diet

On the other hand, my typical lunch -- a sandwich I'll bring from home and a can of soda -- was criticized for the sugar content in the beverage. My dietitian offered a simple suggestion, so obvious that I'd never thought of it before: Drink water instead.

The biggest weakness of this system was having to photograph every single meal. Some meals just defy photographic record-keeping. Capturing my food intake at a tapas place was a minor ordeal, and I didn't even try to photograph the samples I tasted at a cooking demonstration. I could log onto the site and type in descriptions of what I hadn't shot.

After the first week or so of use, my dietitian supplemented her comments with assessments of whether I was eating too much or too little in six categories, displayed in simple dial graphics. The verdict: too much fat, bread, cereal, rice and pasta; not enough milk, yogurt, cheese and fruit. A "Goals" heading offered such general recommendations as "Try to limit your soda intake to 1-2 per week" and "fruit is a great dessert!"

After two weeks, I'd actually made some changes to my diet, somewhat to my surprise: As suggested, I started having water and fruit with lunch and realized that I didn't actually miss the usual dose of fizzy sugared water.

Perhaps more important, knowing that what I put on my plate would be scrutinized by somebody else had exerted its own deterrent effect. The camera may lie, but not as much as people can.

And that's the point of such a service, said Londa Sandon, an assistant professor at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

"People also tend to greatly underestimate their portion sizes when writing things down and may intentionally or unintentionally forget to report that chocolate chip cookie in the middle of the day," wrote Sandon (also a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association) in an e-mail. "People also have difficulty with how they represent mixed dishes and the serving size of different ingredients in the dish."

While not familiar with the MyFoodPhone service, she said it sounded like much less effort than a traditional program where you write down what you eat. And while a picture alone might not always allow a dietitian to calculate a meal's calories, it would give "a much better idea of the portion size and what the meal contains," Sandon said.

Leslie Bonci, director of sports nutrition at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, backed up Sandon's assessment. She called MyFoodPhone's $99 monthly fee "a bargain" compared with in-person consultation by a dietitian -- "The initial visit will cost more than that." (The $99 fee does not include the $10 to $20 you'd likely pay under your wireless service plan to e-mail pictures of a month's meals. And, of course, you'd also have to provide your own camera phone.) Bonci serves as an adviser to a competing service called Nutrax ( http://www.nutrax.com/ ), which is still in a test phase and offers some cheaper options than MyFoodPhone.

MyFoodPhone itself only launched its service in February, said Marc Onigman, its vice president of business development. The company has signed up 50 registered dietitians to act as advisers and has demonstrated its system to some health care providers and hospitals that Onigman said are considering offering it to members and patients.

Meanwhile, "about 100" people have subscribed, Onigman said. They have all stuck with the program so far -- but the idea is for them to learn portion-control habits that will eliminate their need for the service entirely.

"It's a different approach, it's not really a diet in the conventional use," he said. "It's the throwaway line at the end of every story: Experts say that, you know, the best way to lose weight is to exercise more and eat less." ·

Rob Pegoraro writes about personal technology for the Business section of The Post.