Importing From Cronometer
How to export your food diary from Cronometer as servings.csv and import every food with its nutrients into Kaizora.
Updated
Cronometer records each food you eat with dozens of nutrients. Its Food & Recipe Entries export, a file called servings.csv, has one line per food you logged, with its time and nutrients, and that is the file Kaizora imports.
Export From Cronometer
Cronometer’s mobile app can’t export, so export from the Cronometer website, on a computer:
- Sign in at cronometer.com.
- Open your account settings: More, then Account (older layouts call it Settings, then Account).
- Under Account Data, find Export Data.
- Choose the date range. To bring in your whole diary, pick the longest range offered.
- Select Export Food & Recipe Entries (called Export Servings in older versions). Cronometer downloads servings.csv right away.
Cronometer’s other exports, such as Daily Nutrition (dailysummary.csv), Exercises, Biometrics, and Notes, aren’t the servings file, and Kaizora refuses them.
If the menus have moved, Cronometer’s help centre describes the export under “Account Settings”.
Import It
- Open Data Sources, from the account menu at the bottom of the sidebar.
- Under Imports, find Cronometer Servings and choose Import from file.
- Under File, choose servings.csv.
- Check the Time Zone. Cronometer writes days and times without a time zone, so Kaizora reads them in the zone you choose, yours by default.
- Select Import.
What Comes In
Each line becomes one food on your Food Log, at the time you logged it in Cronometer (or at noon on its day when it has no time), with its name, amount, and nutrients: energy, protein, carbohydrates, fibre, fats, vitamins, minerals, caffeine, alcohol, water, and more. A nutrient Kaizora has no metric for yet is skipped.
A few nutrients have exact definitions, and Kaizora keeps them as Cronometer gives them: vitamin A as retinol activity equivalents, folate as dietary folate equivalents, vitamin E as alpha-tocopherol, and niacin without the niacin your body makes from tryptophan.
Importing Again Replaces Those Days
Food diaries change: you delete a snack, or fix yesterday’s lunch. So a Cronometer import replaces your Cronometer foods on the days the file covers. A food you deleted in Cronometer disappears from Kaizora when you import a newer file covering that day. Foods you logged in Kaizora yourself, and days outside the file, aren’t touched.
To stay up to date, export the last few weeks from time to time and import that file.
Cronometer and Apple Health
If Cronometer also writes to Apple Health, import Cronometer directly: once you have, Kaizora skips Cronometer’s copies in your Apple Health export, so your meals don’t come in twice.
If Something Goes Wrong
- The file is refused: check it’s servings.csv, from Export Food & Recipe Entries, and that it hasn’t been opened and saved again in a spreadsheet app, which can rename its columns or change its dates.
- “This file uses a unit that can’t be imported”: a nutrient column is in a unit Kaizora doesn’t read yet, such as vitamin A in international units. Write to us with the column’s name.
- Foods are at the wrong hour: on Data Sources, choose Delete data in Cronometer Servings’ … menu, then import its files again with the right time zone.