You're right, but I think the general public is largely ignorant about calories and nutrition. Even basics like 4 cals per gram of protein and carbohydrate, 7 for alcohol, 9 for fats. Or even what a carbohydrate really is versus a "sugar", which people talk about as bad.
There's a sweet spot for an app that is inaccurate with a market that wants it but doesn't understand how inaccurate it is.
Kind of like how I could vibe code an app, get it to "work", think it's great and be ignorant of the many ways it will break or isn't working that a knowledgeable developer could.
The general public's understanding of food is still stuck in 1990s "destroy all fats (and completely ignore the sugar we replaced it with)" diet culture.
The fact that people still believe in reducing fat as it's own goal (instead of being an easy way to reduce calorie content) is a testament to how bad the public is at identifying fact from fiction.
Then you have shit like the influencer foods, "Feastables" and "Hydration beverage" Prime, which is just flat soda. It's pathetic.
Or think of all the dude bros who insist on dry scooping cup fulls of protein+caffeine powder, and going home to gorge themselves on two pounds of chicken breast, and yet doing absurdly normal amounts of weightlifting or exercise that requires no modifications to their already protein overloaded American diet.
Diet culture is what is fucking American health. People read fucking tabloids that bad-faith regurgitate poorly done "science", funded by the council for selling more food, and insist that since "Woman's Health" says that scientists say chocolate both kills and saves you, scientists are dumb and know nothing, even though THE ACTUAL SCIENCE NEVER CONCLUDED ANYTHING, because the scientific paper was just an observational study!
Related is the fear some have of Saturated Fats and Meat. So many people don't even realize that the body does need some Saturated Fats, or that fats are often a mix of them and vary by the species, breed and how they're fed.
It doesn't help in how far some foods have been bred in the past century and a half in particular. Or how different people with different genetics may react to certain foods.
There's a sweet spot for an app that is inaccurate with a market that wants it but doesn't understand how inaccurate it is.
Kind of like how I could vibe code an app, get it to "work", think it's great and be ignorant of the many ways it will break or isn't working that a knowledgeable developer could.