I use it for the articles, you can find an article for just about anything.

I use is mostly for tracking. I don't like that board style either.

I only use it for tracking as well. But to those who live outside of the US, I don't know if you've tried it but when you type in a food you're searching for and click the option "search food entered by other members" you get a lot of UK foods results, don't know about Australia. Like I've found nutritional info of lots of foods like aunt bessie's yorkshire puddings, I just check the calorie count and fat count against the packet and hope the author has gotten the carbs and protein right. That saves me entering all the information myself.

And I felt so blonde yesterday when I read a post on this forum talking about having a certain amount of calories left according to their sparkpage. I actually hadn't noticed that feature, and it's right there under the total numbers, not even hidden....

I've recently started and had relatively few problems with finding food, which is pretty good considering I'm not from England, the US or Australia ;) It is hard to find some things like biscuits, but if i know the brand (e.g. arnotts) then I can usually find that. Otherwise, I use my own packaging and look up something with a similar calorie count (I'm not too pedantic about my fat/carb/protein count). Personally, I like how it seperates your meals out, thats helped me a lot

I don't understand why "too American" wouldn't be considered a very valid point. If someone in the United States were using a Southeast Asian or Middle Eastern site and couldn't find common American foods and brands - I would expect someone to point them to a more Ameri-friendly site (rather than suggest they manually input every food choice).

You don't use a tool because it can be used, but because it's the most convenient for you. Why would you use a food journal tool for which you would have to input every food item, if there are more convenient tools available?

I would understand if there were no region-friendly alternatives available - but certainly the UK (and many other regions) have similar sites that would be more useful to people living in that region.

Lots of good points Kaplods! :) I wouldn't recommend for anyone to use Sparkpeople if it doesn't suit them, but I was trying to explain that if you use the information provided by other members, you can find many UK foods without entering them yourself.
I've found most of the foods I've looked for, but like Iconised Ghost sometimes I just pick something that's very close if I can't. If there is a free UK based caloriecounting site I have yet to find it, but I'm very happy with Spark for the time being. I'm under the impression too that there are lots of UK&Irish people on the site judging by the results I get when searching for member's foods because in addition to major brands there are lots of storebrand food products listed. But maybe I've just been lucky, I don't know. I'm sure that with any site like that you have to enter your own foods every now and then though. When I joined I entered the foods I eat very often that I couldn't find an exact match for, so now it probably only takes less than 10 minutes per day to calculate calories, which I don't think is too bad.
I find the most time consuming thing is entering my own recipes and importing them into my food log, but I don't see how that would be quicker on any other website.

sanna maria, i didnt realise that you could check what other users have input! thanks for the tip!

edited to add, when i clicked on import from other users there was an option for foods from ireland, and things that are really exclusive to ireland like tayto crisps were there. black pudding was there too! that is a really good feature, and makes things alot easier! thanks so much for pointing that out sanna maria!