MyFitnessPal Notice of Data Breach
MyFitnessPal is a handy smartphone app that we have recommended to many of our clients. It's very useful to track a person's dietary intake and it offers instant feedback - a pie chart graph showing macronutrient ratios (% protein, %carbohydrate, % fat). The app also tallies calories although we as Nutritional Therapy Practitioners steer away from calorie counting. The big nutrition picture of a client is best summarized by the amounts (by percentage) of the macronutrients they consume.
Clients may embark on different diets based on their bio-individuality. For example: The High Fat, Low Carb diet my be beneficial for some. In this case, the advantage of knowing the proportion of macronutrients allows us to make appropriate dietary changes. If the fat ratio is too low then the person knows to add good fats when dishing up their meals!
Now after introducing you to this easy food & nutrition application please be advised of the following data breach:
Under Armour who owns MyFitnessPal made a recent statement that the data of 150 million users has been exposed. This may include usernames, email addresses, and passwords. At least the good news is - the payment information was not affected as it is processed separately from the working app.
Nevertheless the important take-home message for MyFitnessPal users is to CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD IMMEDIATELY.
We would not abandon MyFitnessPal since its enormous database of food has been built up for about 10 years. This app is so easy to use when your food item is already listed in their system. However, there are other nutrition tracker apps out there such as Cronometer, FitCalc, and FitMyMacros. Tracking our fitness and nutrition with an app certainly motivates us in the right direction! It's also fun to watch the improvement unfold on our own smartphone.
