What you need to know
- Garmin announced new nutrition tracking features for Garmin Connect Plus users this week, allowing you to set caloric goals to lose weight or see nutrient recommendations tailored to your body size.
- You can use your phone camera to scan barcodes or "AI-powered image recognition" to log your food data.
- Garmin's nutrition tracking will sync with Connect+ AI summaries and Lifestyle Logging, connecting poor eating habits to their effects on your health stats.
Garmin wants to help users hit their New Year's resolutions to eat better, adding a dedication nutrition tracking tool with personalized diet recommendations and AI image recognition to log your calories. But you'll need a Connect Plus subscription to access it.
Already available in the Connect app on Android and iOS, nutrition tracking can be added as a main Tab in the navigation bar; you can also add the nutrition widget to the In Focus or At a Glance sections on the Home tab.
Essentially, Garmin Nutrition Tracking lets you log meals or individual food items from a "global food database" with "packaged, restaurant and regional food options," either by searching by name or using your phone camera to scan barcodes. You can even use "AI-powered image recognition" to capture restaurant meals or others that aren't easily quantified.
It's similar to how Amazfit's Zepp Health logs food using AI recognition, though that doesn't require a subscription. I plan to test Garmin's AI accuracy in the coming weeks.
Once logged, your food's calories, protein, fat, and carbs will be compared against your daily targets, created using personalized data like height, weight, gender, and active calories from workouts. You'll also customize your targets based on your specific goal, like losing X pounds in Y weeks or eating more protein.
Like most nutritional apps, Garmin allows you to create food favorites to log them more quickly and easily. Certain Garmin watches also support the option to add favorites directly on your wrist, while older models will rely on mobile logging.
Update: Garmin has shared the full list of watches supporting the feature, either natively or via Connect IQ:
- Fenix 8 / Pro / E
- Forerunner 570 / 970
- Instinct 3 AMOLED / MIP / Tactical
- Venu 4 / X1
- Vivoactive 6
- Connect IQ: Fenix 6 family, Fenix 7 family, Forerunner 165 / 255 / 265 / 955 / 965, Venu 2 / 3, Vivoactive 4 / 5
Once you start logging meals long-term, Garmin will create "daily, weekly, monthly and annual reports" so you can see your changing dietary habits over time, while the "Active Intelligence" AI will judge "how nutrition is impacting health and training," like hypothetically connecting your poor sleep to late-night snacking.
Garmin Connect Plus launched in 2025 with a few exclusive features: AI workout summaries, local Garmin Trails recs, live mobile activities, coaching videos paired to Garmin Coach training plans, extra challenges and badges, and advanced data graphs in the Connect web interface.
Garmin hasn't paywalled any old features, but long-time users tend to react negatively whenever a new feature requires Connect+, such as the recent Year in Review. But nutrition logging is often featured on paid apps such as Fitbit Premium or MyFitnessPal, so it's not surprising to see this feature tied to a subscription.
Garmin has emphasized health tracking with recent updates, particularly Health Status and Lifestyle Logging. Nutrition falls into the same mainstream category, targeting athletes who expect guidance and coaching for both health and fitness.
Anyone can try Garmin Connect Plus for 30 days to test nutrition logging, after which you'll need to pay $6.99/month or $69.99/year.
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