Cara: Mood, Poop & Food Tracker (Version 1.20)

Synopsis of the App​​

Cara is a personal food and symptom diary that lets you track what you eat and how you feel. The app makes it easy to enter foods, track symptoms, and digestion and elimination details to get a daily score.  Used consistently, Cara users can share trends with medical professionals and may learn to avoid the symptom triggers altogether. Though the food database is somewhat limited, users can easily add their own foods to the database.

Platform and Price
Free. Apple and Android (launching soon).

RDN Score
4 out of 5

Pros

  • Beautifully designed and easy to use.
  • Starts with an interview to capture gender, symptoms and age to factor into the journal.
  • Easily enter foods you’ve eaten, how you feel on a sliding scale including your mood, stress, stomach pain and bloating and stool output. Cara covers all bases with space to enter additional symptoms, medication, and notes on events, workouts and other factors that may impact how you feel.
  • Add custom foods to the journal by simply typing them in.
  • Track elimination habits in great detail with Cara’s stool questions that include visuals and text descriptions to help users track shape, color, and effort and pressure to go.
  • Get a daily symptom score with a comparison to others on that day.
  • View pain, stress and bloating charted on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
  • After 6 days of tracking, Cara reveals reports comparing foods on the best and worst three days based on the symptom score.
  • Skip account creation for privacy or set up an account for the option to backup your data, export records, and sign up for new information.
  • Set reminders to be notified when it’s time to enter foods each day.
  • Includes the option to work with coaches for guidance.

Cons

  • There’s no information provided on the background or credentials of the optional coaches.
  • Food choices are limited.
  • Users receive automatic messages from Team Cara chat bots (for helping to track goals). This may feel intrusive or unnerving to some.

Bottom Line

Cara is a well-designed food and symptom tracker that might be especially useful for people with digestive conditions.

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Marisa Moore
Marisa Moore, MBA, RDN, LD, is based in Atlanta and specializes in culinary nutrition, communications and consulting. She blogs at marisamoore.com. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter.