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Calorie Tracker Lab
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Naomi Sterling, PhD, MS, RDN

Methodology Director

ORCID: 0009-0005-2847-4193

About Dr. Naomi Sterling

Dr. Sterling is a Harvard-trained public-health nutritionist whose research career has focused on a single, methodologically narrow question: how accurately do dietary-assessment instruments actually measure what people eat? It is the question that anchors the entire Calorie Tracker Lab testing program. A calorie tracking app is, at root, a dietary-assessment instrument. Naomi’s job is to make sure the lab evaluates them with the same statistical rigor an academic group would use to validate a 24-hour recall or a food-frequency questionnaire.

She joined Calorie Tracker Lab in August 2025, two weeks after Vincent founded the publication. Vincent and Naomi had collaborated previously on a consumer-facing accuracy explainer, and her recruitment was the lab’s first hire. Naomi is the second signatory on the methodology document and has gating authority over any clinical or nutrition-science claim that appears on the site.

Credentials in detail

Pre-Lab work

Five years as senior research nutritionist at an academic medical center’s clinical research unit, where she designed dietary-assessment validation studies and contributed to the unit’s standing protocol for evaluating consumer-grade food-tracking instruments. Her work there included a study on photo-based dietary assessment in patients on GLP-1 receptor agonists, which informs how she reviews the Lab’s GLP-1-related coverage today.

Editorial focus

Naomi reviews every Calorie Tracker Lab page that touches: app accuracy methodology, MAPE calculation, weighed reference meal protocols, database-quality scoring, GLP-1 nutrition framing, evidence grading, and any direct or indirect health claim. She does not write reviews of individual apps and is not credited as the author of comparisons; she is the methodology and science gate.

Conflicts of interest

Naomi has no financial relationships with calorie tracking app companies, GLP-1 pharmaceutical manufacturers, or weight-loss program providers. She holds no affiliate accounts. Her income is derived from this publication and from independent academic consulting unrelated to consumer apps. She has never received fees from any company whose product is reviewed here.

Recent Work

Articles

Comparisons