Data export
A data export is a file containing everything you have logged in an app, in a format you can read elsewhere; the ability to take it with you is what stops a food log from becoming a hostage.
Two years of food and training data is worth something. It is the only record of what you actually did, and it is the only way a new app can tell you anything useful on day one rather than day ninety.
What a real export looks like
A CSV or JSON file, downloadable without contacting support, containing dated rows with the food name, quantity, and the macro and energy values as logged. Anything less — a PDF summary, a chart, a "request your data and we will email it within 30 days" form — is technically an export and practically not one.
Questions worth asking before you commit
Is export available on the free tier, or only while subscribed? Does it include workouts and bodyweight, or only food? Does it cover the full history or the last 90 days? Can you get it after you cancel?
Why it is a privacy question too
In many jurisdictions, data protection law gives you a right to a copy of your personal data in a portable format. An app that makes this difficult is telling you how it thinks about the data it holds. That is worth knowing before you hand it two years of meals.
Sources
- 1.Open Food Facts — Open Food Facts
- 2.Weight management — NIDDK, National Institutes of Health
Related reading
- What your calorie app knows about you
A food log is health data: what you eat, what you weigh, how it changes. What apps collect, what to check in a policy, and the settings to change.
- How to get your food log out of any app
Two years of logs are worth something. What a real export looks like, the questions to ask before committing, and what to do when there is no export button.
- How to choose a calorie tracking app that sticks
The database decides accuracy, speed decides whether you keep using it, and export decides whether you can leave. Everything else is decoration.
- Logging food by voice: what it actually fixes
The slow part of tracking is choosing between database entries, not typing. Why speaking a meal removes that step, and where voice logging still fails.