A calorie counter app for the Philippines, rice and all.

A checklist

What a calorie counter needs to get right here.

• It knows the dishes. Tapsilog, kare-kare and pancit palabok, not just “beef with rice”.
• Rice is its own line. The cup of rice moves the number more than almost any choice of dish, so it should never hide inside the plate.
• Shared plates work. Family-style tables are normal. You should be able to keep your share, not the whole platter.
• It copes with patchy signal. Capture and browsing should not need data — handy at a roadside eatery in the province or a mall basement food court.
• It works on Android and iPhone. And it shouldn’t need an account just to remember lunch.

The plates

Rough numbers for what people actually order.

These come from our own dish pages, built from the Philippine Food Composition Tables and typical restaurant portions. Restaurant servings vary a lot, so read each as a starting point, not a measurement. The full menu is in Filipino food calories.

The rice maths

The cup of rice is the biggest lever on the table.

The Philippine Food Composition Tables put boiled white rice at about 129 calories per 100 g and fried rice at about 187. A level restaurant cup of steamed rice comes to roughly 210 — see calories in a cup of rice — and a cup of garlic rice to roughly 300, because of the oil.

• Half a cup of plain rice: about 100.
• A heaped cup (about 200 g): about 260.
• Every extra cup of plain rice at an all-you-can-eat place: about 210 more.
• Plain rice instead of garlic rice on a silog: about 90 less.

Fast food

Jollibee, and why the numbers are a little foreign.

Jollibee publishes menu facts for its US restaurants, and our pages use them: a 1-piece Chickenjoy with rice and gravy is about 600, Jollibee Spaghetti about 610, a 2-piece Burger Steak with rice about 570, and a Peach Mango Pie about 270.

We could not find the same published numbers for Philippine stores, and servings may differ, so treat those as close cousins rather than exact. A photo estimate of the plate in front of you, corrected when you know better, is often the more honest number.

How PlateDiary does it

One photo of the table, a number per dish.

1. Turn Calories onSettings → PlateDiary AI → Calories. They are off unless you turn them on; with them off, PlateDiary shows no numbers at all.
2. Snap the tableOne photo when the food lands. Every dish, drink and cup of rice is cut out on your phone into its own save, offline.
3. Let PlateDiary AI read itTap Read and each save gets a name and one rough “~” number. Small pictures of the cut-out dishes go up, with the place’s name as a hint — never the table photo, faces or your location.
4. Keep your shareShared a kare-kare four ways? Tap Edit and type your part. Your fix is remembered for that dish at that place.
5. See it add upThe Calories page adds up the meals you saved, by day, dish and place.

Be honest

What to know before you rely on it.

• Estimates are rough and usually run low. A photo can’t see the oil in the sinangag or the fat in the sisig. The app says so too.
• 10 free AI tries per phone, then the PlateDiary AI membership. Prices come from your store, in pesos where you are.
• No AI needed to type a number on any food or drink save — free.
• It’s not a full tracker. No barcode scanner, exercise or weight, and nothing is written to Apple Health or Health Connect.
• For a medical reason, talk to a doctor or a registered dietitian rather than leaning on any app.

In PlateDiary

A rough number for the dishes you save — only if you want one.

Sources

Where the facts come from