§ · Apple Health
The calorie trackerApple Health is missing.
Apple Health stores nutrition but gives you no way to log food — the Nutrition tab sits empty until something fills it. BiteDeck fills it: five HealthKit reads, ten writes, and every metric has its own BiteDeck toggle on top of the iOS permission, so you can pause any single one without disconnecting everything.
§ 01 · The 5 reads
These come from Apple Health into BiteDeck.
Steps
Surfaces your daily count on Home and feeds the activity factor in TDEE math.
Active energy
Adds workout-derived burn to the daily expenditure side of your forecast.
Workouts
Imported workouts appear in Today’s Workouts with a "WATCH" badge so you know they came from HealthKit.
Weight
New weight readings from a scale or a manual HealthKit entry pull into the weight chart and update the forecast.
Body fat percentage
Imported BF% feeds the Composition page and the Katch-McArdle BMR calculation.
§ 02 · The 10 writes
These go from BiteDeck into Apple Health.
Calories (dietary energy)
Total intake per day.
Protein
Macro per meal.
Carbohydrates
Macro per meal.
Fat
Macro per meal.
Fiber
Micro per meal.
Sugar
Micro per meal.
Sodium
Micro per meal.
Water
Per glass and per day.
Weight
Manual weight entries you log in BiteDeck.
Body fat percentage
BF% entries from any of the four estimation methods.
§ 03 · Per-metric toggles
iOS's HealthKit sheet lets you grant or revoke permission per metric — but it's a one-shot setup-time choice. Inside BiteDeck, you get a second layer: a toggle for every read and every write. Turn any single one off without going back to the iOS permission sheet, and without disconnecting everything else.
Want BiteDeck to write calories but not sodium? Toggle. Reading steps but you'd rather not import workouts? Toggle. The granularity is the point.
§ 04 · How to connect
- Open BiteDeck Settings → Apple Health.
- Tap Connect Apple Health.
- iOS shows its HealthKit permission sheet — allow what you want.
- Use BiteDeck's in-app toggles to pause any single metric later without touching the system sheet.
§ 05 · How to revoke
Two paths.
In BiteDeck: Settings → Apple Health → toggle off the metric you want paused. Re-enable anytime.
From iOS: Apple Health app → Sharing → BiteDeck → flip off any metric or all of them. BiteDeck detects the change silently and stops writing.
§ 06 · What never leaves your phone
HealthKit is not a cloud service. It's a local store that sits between apps on your iPhone. BiteDeck reads from it and writes to it — both sides happen on the device. None of your HealthKit data goes through a BiteDeck server. There is no BiteDeck server to send it through. Read how offline tracking works for the longer story.
§ 07 · How we compare
Most calorie trackers' HealthKit support is a write-only afterthought (or limited to dietary energy). BiteDeck's 5 reads / 10 writes / per-metric-toggle setup is on the higher end of the category. Specifically:
BiteDeck vs. MyFitnessPal — MFP's write surface is narrower.
BiteDeck vs. Foodnoms — Foodnoms supports HealthKit; metric coverage and toggle granularity differ.
§ 08 · FAQ
Does Apple Health have a calorie counter?
Apple Health stores nutrition data but does not count calories for you — it has no food database, no barcode scanner, and no way to log a meal. It is a container, not a tracker. You need a third-party app to write calories into it. BiteDeck does exactly that: log a meal by photo, barcode, label scan, or search, and the calories, protein, carbs, fat, fiber, sugar, sodium, and water all write straight into Apple Health.
Does Apple Health have a food tracker?
No. Apple Health has a Nutrition section that displays food data, but Apple ships no way to enter it — there is no built-in food log or database. The Nutrition section stays empty until a third-party app fills it. BiteDeck writes ten nutrition metrics into that section, so your Apple Health Nutrition tab becomes populated and useful.
Which metrics does BiteDeck read from Apple Health?
Five: steps, active energy, workouts, weight, and body fat percentage. Reading steps and active energy means your calorie target adjusts to what you actually did that day, and imported workouts show up on the Home screen with a WATCH badge so you can tell them from manual entries.
Can I sync only some metrics instead of all of them?
Yes, and this is the part most apps get wrong. Every single metric has its own in-app toggle sitting on top of the iOS permission. Turn off weight writes while keeping calorie writes, or pause steps for a week, without revoking the whole HealthKit connection and losing your other permissions.
Does BiteDeck work without Apple Health?
Completely. HealthKit is opt-in and entirely optional — BiteDeck stores everything locally on your iPhone regardless. Apple Health integration adds automatic step and workout import; nothing about the app depends on it. You can connect later, or never.