It's no secret that MyFitnessPal is garbage, while it was owned by UnderArmor they at least only charged premium for "serious athletes" wanting total control over everything but that has all changed since it was acquired by the equity firm Francisco Partners that loves buying mature tech.
Instead of adding new features to charge for, they added old features to the premium subscription and the free version is basically a shell of what MyFitnessPal used to be. Was the contract Garmin had with UnderArmor grandfathered in with Francisco Partners or is the deal so lucrative that Garmin won't bother to change anything? If you look at techs acquired by the firm, they're very aggressive with advertising and monetizing the techs they acquire since they usually are purchased while having millions of users.
Does Garmin not realize they changed ownership? The mobile app after connecting your account to MyFitnessPal still links the privacy policy to UnderArmor's website but not to MFP's privacy policy on it's own website, which basically now says they sell all info they get their hands on.
Even the older workarounds to getting your nutrition info from a good app into MFP don't work anymore (such as just Quick adding the nutrition values at the end of the day) because now you can only quick add Calories, other nutrient values require a subscription.
Not only did they monetize all the old free features, they doubled the subscription price to $20 a month as well.
When I first purchased a Garmin tracker over a decade ago, Garmin seemed like a well rounded consumer friendly company and despite the premium prices of the trackers it felt like you were getting your moneys worth. Although trackers from other companies supposedly don't offer as much accuracy or quality, I think my Venu 2 will be the last tracker I purchase as the other trackers offer much more compatibility and interoperability between service.
Until I move on, I'd like to know how others are tracking nutritional consumption. Are you using MFP's free app which purposely makes things slow to encourage you to subscribe to unlock features widely available in other apps just so you can them in Garmin Connect? Have you moved on from Garmin Connect to another service to be able to track nutrients? Or..?
Mostly curious because I'd like to be more productive with my workouts and daily routine, and just because I decided to spend more to purchase a Garmin tracker doesn't mean I want to continually invest in companies that are only interested in helping me lose weight and get in shape by emptying my wallet.
Edit: Forgot to mention the apps I'm currently testing out.
1. Cronometer - A lot of older suggestions in the forums mentioned this app because you used to be able to easily log/add to MFP but seems like that benefit is gone after MFP pay walled a lot more features. It doesn't seem to completely sync all Garmin Connect data as well.
2. MyNetDiary - This app has a ton of features, and it's App/Device connect menu seems more user friendly than other apps (Tells you which direction data is syncing so you don't have multiple sources adding to log, which seems to be a common complaint regarding syncing apps but masqueraded as "[App] is saying exercise burned 2x as many calories." Some of the bigger trackers like FitBit, Garmin, Withings require a subscription to link accounts though. While that is off putting, the sub is only $9 and unlocks a lot of information. Seems like a good alternative.
3. Health Sync - Saw this suggested in a thread, it pulls information from Garmin Connect and writes it to other apps, unfortunately it seems like it requires a subscription to perform the Syncs beyond the weekly trial period. It'd seem useful if it were free, but why pay to sync from this app when I could just pay the sub to the nutrition trackers and unlock more features?
4. Health Connect by Google - Seems exactly like Health Sync but much fewer instructions/descriptions and it's got bad reviews from people claiming it adds a lot more information. It seems like a good database for storing data from multiple apps and then writing to a single app, Garmin Connect isn't one of those apps available yet though. Seems like you could find a work around using it, but I've only just downloaded it.
5. Google Fit - Using the Health Connect app along with this seems like a good way to freely monitor my metrics from a single dashboard but I'm still very new to this and still playing with it.
I've downloaded a few other apps but haven't toyed with them long enough to form an opinion yet.