<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Editor\u2019s note:\u00A0This look at healthy eating startup Make My Plate was\u00A0originally published by Israel\u2019s NoCamels blog.\r\n\r\nMost diets are fads and ones that have proven successful, like Weight Watchers, are tedious (adding and\u00A0subtracting\u00A0food points all day is tiring, believe me.)\u00A0Alin Cooperman, CEO of\u00A0Make My Plate, is on a mission to make tracking nutrition easier \u2014 and way more fun.\r\n\r\nDuring her graduate studies in Jerusalem, Cooperman visited a nutritionist who gave her a food diary to track her\u00A0calorie intake. \u201CThe idea came to me to combine the idea of a food diary with something visual, something that would actually show how I eat,\u201D Cooperman tells NoCamels.\r\n\r\nIn 2011, Cooperman left her job and studies to start Make My Plate, which she refers to as the \u201Cfirst visual personal nutrition platform.\u201D\r\n\r\nThe goal of Make My Plate is to make the way people analyze their food intake easier and more fun. \u201CWe want to learn about you and then help you make healthy decisions,\u201D Cooperman explains. Users enter the site, and can create a simple profile, or sync an existing Facebook account.\u00A0 They can then get started using the Make My Plate site to make virtual plates of meals, in order to calculate calories, fats, carbohydrates, cholesterol, and protein.\r\n\r\nhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKB_cDGV-3g\r\n\r\nUsers drag and drop photos of foods, and can resize them to create a virtual plate that mirrors what they actually ate. The site is then able to calculate caloric intake and nutritional value based on these \u201Cplates\u201D. \u201CWe have uploaded a ton of pictures of food. People can add new products, and send these photos to us, which we will upload after we have consulted our team of nutritionists about the nutritional values,\u201D says Cooperman. The nutritional values on the site are in accordance with US Department of Agriculture (USDA) standards and practices, she says.\r\nShare your plate\r\nThe plates users create are then saved to their online food diary, and can be looked at later on to see nutritional ingestion by day, week, or month. Users can also see what percentage of their recommended daily nutritional intake they have consumed at any point. In the corner of the screen is the new MyPlate icon that is used by the USDA to describe a balanced diet. Users can see which food category each added food item falls under (dairy, vegetables, proteins etc.) These virtual plates can then be shared (by choice) with users on the site, Facebook and Twitter.\r\n\r\n\u201CWe have created a search engine, where users can search for plates based on ingredients or calories. Users can then find plates made by other users and nutritionists,\u201D says Cooperman. \u201CThe main thing is, when people are going on a diet, or have a limiting disease like diabetes or celiac, it\u2019s hard to know what to eat. Now, users can meet people just like them on the site and share food plans,\u201D Cooperman explains.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nMake My Plate has created an online network, or \u201Cmarketplace\u201D where users can interact and learn from each other. Within this network, Make My Plate has approved certain nutritionists and clinical dietitians to join the site as\u00A0advisers. Make My Plate users can message the experts for advice, and even set up video consultations. Each nutritionist sets his or her own price for these video chat sessions, and users can choose with whom to make an appointment. Make My Plate makes a percentage off every session scheduled through the site.\r\n\r\nAt the moment, Make My Plate is screening the nutrition experts who join the marketplace. \u201CEventually, we want to open up our marketplace to all nutrition experts, and allow the community to decide who is legitimate and who is not,\u201D Cooperman reports.\r\nKeep track of your diet on the go\r\nThe pilot testing of the site was completed in Israel a little over a month ago and the site is now live. Make My Plate has also released an iPhone app, through which users can create visual plates and count calories. A full Android app is also in the works. In addition to monetizing through the online appointments, the company also hopes to monetize with advertising.\r\n\r\n\r\nBig in Australia\r\nMake My Plate plans to target English-speaking countries including Canada, the US, UK, and Australia. The site has already garnered good traffic from Australia after an article was published in an Australian Dietitian Association publication. The company is also looking for ways to become a nutrition-teaching tool for children in schools.\r\n\r\nMake My Plate has competition from a number of other online calorie-counter and diet websites, but believes they are different because they \u201Cshow nutrition in a visual way.\u201D So far, the company has thousands of people using the site, and reports that many users are joining every day. The company received an undisclosed amount of pre-seed money from angel investors, and is now in the midst of another round of funding.\r\n\r\nCEO Alin Cooperman holds an undergraduate degree in psychology from Ben Gurion University, and has put her graduate degree at Hebrew University on hold to develop Make My Plate. Along with Cooperman, the company\u2019s developer, design team, and advisory board are all based in Israel.\r\n\u27A4\u00A0Make My Plate\u00A0\r\n\r\nThis story was\u00A0originally published\u00A0on\u00A0NoCamels,\u00A0a news website covering the latest innovations coming out of Israel.\r\n\r\n\r\nImage credit: Getty Images"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/12/31/make-my-plate-the-online-visual-nutrition-guide-that-lets-you-drag-and-drop-your-next-healthy-meal/>