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Eat This Much – Automatic Meal Planner

483 points by sogen 7y ago

ericd 7y ago
Heh perfect for about 13ish days from now...
- iamwil 7y ago
  Haha. You have control over the menu?
  - ericd 7y ago
    You’re right, definitely don’t :-)
BadassFractal 7y ago
Slightly overkill, but just as a thought experiment, it would be neat to have something where you declare calories / macros / food preferences, how much time you have to cook and how many cheat days you want. Then the system will figure out all of the ingredients for you, ship them to you through Instacart on a regular basis, put reminders on your calendar for when you should cook what, and optimize both for nutrition, variety, time and food waste.
- papa_bear 7y ago
  We have some features for most of these things, but you have to dig a bit for it. To edit the macro targets: https://imgur.com/u08DLNy https://imgur.com/u08DLNy To change cook times, click the 3-dot menu next to the meal, and then when you regenerate, the plans will match whatever your latest settings have been changed to. You can create a free account and use the single day generator, plus use it as a tracker, but with the subscription, we'll send you a weekly grocery list that you can export to Instacart (or amazon fresh) for delivery.
foolinaround 7y ago
this is very nice UI, and with some improvements, would be very handy. Some feedback - 1) It should provide additional filters like 'gluten-free', 'histamine-intolerant' etc. 2) When I suggest 2 meals, it assumes that it is breakfast & lunch - when I might be thinking - lunch and dinner. Allow user to pick the option. 3) When it provides me the choices - lets say breakfast - eggs, onions and tomato omlet, then it should list these 3 ingredients - and i am allergic to 'tomato' - i can then scratch it off and ask it to 'refine' -- the next time, it should not return dishes that have tomato in them as a main dish.
- papa_bear 7y ago
  The food filters are pretty limited until you create a basic account. Then you can do gluten free or any keyword based exclusions, but we don't have any data to factor in histamine intolerance. You can also edit the meal settings if you click the 3-dot menu next to the meal name, or we have a "Week layout" editor that you can use to mix/match meals. You can also give a "thumbs down" to specific ingredients like tomatoes and it will exclude recipes that have them on future regenerates. We've tried to cram a lot of features into the app, but now one of our biggest challenges is managing the complexity and surfacing the most useful things people want. So this is very useful feedback to know what comes to mind first when you use the app :)
papa_bear 7y ago
Noticed a bit of a load spike, cool to see our site posted on HN :) Let me know if you have any feedback or questions and I'll do my best to respond.
- dan1234 7y ago
  Why, when I chose metric on registration do I get my meals in ounces? There doesn't appear to be any way to delete my account.
  - papa_bear 7y ago
    It should auto-convert units like ounces and pounds, but I'm not 100% sure if it does on the apps. As a fallback, we show gram weights on everything, but obviously not the most convenient to bust out a scale all the time. To delete your account, click your username -> membership status -> delete account.
- appleiigs 7y ago
  I do one-meal-a-day. The website returned 18 servings of egg and 10 slices of bread. Maybe there should be a maximum serving per meal.
  - papa_bear 7y ago
    Oof yeah. It's currently configured to max out at 3 servings unless a meal's target is >1500 calories, and then it uncaps. That's caused a few complaints, so we'll likely revert it. One workaround in the meantime is to ask for more meals, and then just eat them all at once :) You can also drag items between meals if you want to reorg them.
- batesy 7y ago
  This is really nice. I love the UI, and am probably going use pieces as inspiration for something very unrelated I'm building. Are you building this as a side gig? How many hours per week is going into it?
dandanio 7y ago
Drop the login: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/login-walls/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/login-walls/
- _august 7y ago
  Don't they? Or are you saying this site is a good example of doing that?
  - papa_bear 7y ago
    Our mobile app doesn't have the demo generator, which is maybe what he tried first? Something we might add in the future.
  - dandanio 7y ago
    From a UX experience, I think you'd be more successful if you would let the user experience everything your site has to offer and if they decide to continue (or stay with the site, save their prefs and eventually - become paying customers) - give them an option to create an account, because according to the latest research in UX, any login walls (even the FREE account ones) are detrimental. Check the article I linked above.
mellowdream 7y ago
This is a cool idea that I'd personally love to see work in some form or another. In my experience, though, the tedium of tracking macros and the like has probably been the biggest obstacle for being consistent. When I cut now, just maintaining some very simple principles like "eat less, eat vegetables, it's OK to feel hungry" has been vastly more useful long-term than weighing food on scales and calculating BMI every week... But maybe that's just me. This solution might make for a nice compromise.
- TheAdamAndChe 7y ago
  When I first started learning about and applying personal finance principles, I counted every dollar going in and out of my accounts, made projections, and planned for everything. This conscious effort very effectively changed my spending habits to the point where finance principals are now second nature. For many people, getting started with dieting requires(or is at least helped by) such a conscious effort too.
- allovernow 7y ago
  >eat less, eat vegetables, it's OK to feel hungry I think one of the biggest things a person can do is move away from the three daily meal regimen that as I understand is a relatively modern invention. After a few weeks or so you don't miss breakfast anymore, especially if you're the type to drink coffee in the morning.
  - slothtrop 7y ago
    Right but merely skipping breakfast won't ensure you'll consume fewer calories in a day. There are recorded advantages to breakfast consumption with regards to metabolism etc. It's worth experimenting to suit preference. Maybe when trying to run a deficit, skipping is easier, but that doesn't apply to me.
    - leetcrew 7y ago
      part of the problem is that the conventional american breakfast (cereal, fruit, maybe some toast) is almost entirely carbs. unless you go to the trouble of frying some eggs, you're getting off to a bad start that will leave you crashing by the end of the morning and overeating at lunch.
jbverschoor 7y ago
I use fitchef.nl. Weekly tailored menu with delivery integration of the biggest supermarket
- papa_bear 7y ago
  Interesting, will check it out. Thanks!
crooked-v 7y ago
I feel like the need to log in and the way the signup is structured obscure what's the actual most potentially valuable part of this service to me, which is the integration with Instacart. It's also not clear how well that integration would actually work in practice, which makes me pretty wary about it.
- papa_bear 7y ago
  Good point. The instacart integration works alright, but could be better if we had a tighter integration. We basically send them a text version of the grocery list and they just show searched matches for each item that you have in your grocery list. For some idea, here's a screenshot of the grocery list page, and a link to the Instacart order page where you choose the matches (although Instacart's page is down for me right now): Grocery list: https://imgur.com/F6lsdXi https://imgur.com/F6lsdXi Order page: https://www.instacart.com/store/partner_recipe?guest=true&partner_name=eatthismuch&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eatthismuch.com%2Fpantry%2Fformatted-groceries%2Fd974d0bc13770%2F%3Ft%3D1576801353%26prefer_organic%3Dfalse&utm_campaign=eatthismuch_grocerylist&utm_medium=recipe_api&utm_source=partner_eatthismuch https://www.instacart.com/store/partner_recipe?guest=true&pa...
Proven 7y ago
This must be Peak Misery - to accept to listen to a computer when it comes to matters that computer has no business deciding for you
hthtegr 7y ago
Brilliant, love it. If only there were more vegan recipes
saagarjha 7y ago
You may want to add a similarity checker on the foods. I put in "vegetarian" and got the profoundly stimulating options of "mashed chickpeas" and "carrots with hummus" for lunch.
nkozyra 7y ago
I like the idea but it's producing a lot of ... unappealing combos like peanut butter and honey ... sandwich? on ... rye? With a random side of red pepper hummus? I think what's missing is some graph of compatible ingredients per type of food. Things that generally require some companion (what am I eating that hummus with?) You could generate a pizza via compatibility scores. Same with curries, sandwiches, etc. And of course hinting at the type of macros one might want. 60% of my diet as fat is probably not a good regular day. But very compelling. I struggle with meal planning and the state of recipes and meals and the seo gamesmanship makes the whole thing very arduous.
- fredsanford 7y ago
  FWIW, Peanut butter and a drizzle of honey on rye is one of my goto sandwiches...
  - nkozyra 7y ago
    I have peanut butter and honey often, but on a single piece of toast. And not for dinner, typically :)
- logicchains 7y ago
  In Australia at least, peanut butter and honey sandwiches are a thing. The taste is actually not bad, and it is possibly healthier than peanut butter and jam sandwiches.
  - aussiegeek 7y ago
    I'm curious where this is a thing more specifically, never heard of this living in Victoria and Queensland
    - zbentley 7y ago
      This was often a food for kids (<10yo) in Utah, USA, and other rocky mountain states.
    - 7y ago
dang 7y ago
First discussed in 2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4359542 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4359542 A large Show HN in 2013: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5640336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5640336
edoo 7y ago
I highly recommend keto. If you eat fast carbs when your glycogen reserves are full your body will turn it to fat immediately leaving you feeling hungry again even though you met your caloric needs for the day. The natural response is to eat more leading to obesity. If you nail the keto diet you don't have to plan your meals and go hungry in between to stay in shape. You can eat whenever you feel like it. That does mean your only carbs come from veggies. The calories from fast carbs should be replaced with animal fat, not protein. If you eat too much protein it gets converted directly to sugar anyway and is harder on your kidneys. I lost dozens of pounds without going hungry (except for that initial fast carb addiction breaking) or counting calories.
- ahnick 7y ago
  > If you eat too much protein it gets converted directly to sugar anyway and is harder on your kidneys. It is true that the process of gluconeogenesis can convert excess protein into glucose; however, I understand that it is very much an open question as to how much of the excess protein will actually be converted in an individual. For instance diabetics apparently experience a higher rate of protein catabolism due to insulin deficiencies than non-diabetics.
  - edoo 7y ago
    After rereading what I wrote I realize I made a mistake. It is about spiking your blood sugar which fast carbs do that leads to premature hunger. If you haven't filled your glycogen reserves you avoid the insulin spike, and if they are full the insulin spike is likely causing metabolic damage on top of the future needless hunger. Regarding the protein I swear I've seen low carb studies somewhere that did not improve diabetic conditions but they were all super high in protein. True moderate protein keto seems to be getting rid of at least pre diabetic conditions.
TheRealPomax 7y ago
It would be nice if I could indicate which meals are important to me if I pick fewer than 3 meals a day. Breakfast and lunch is not a winning combination, whereas "that small meal at 10:30 that doesn't really have a name" and "that meal at 5pm that doesn't have a name" would be useful.
- papa_bear 7y ago
  Hit the 3-dot menu next to a meal's name to edit its settings. You can change the name (among other things), but it might complain if you try to reuse one of the default names.
  - TheRealPomax 7y ago
    That's not what I care about if I just need a recommendation instead of making this website my religion. I have no desire to become intimate with this website: it seems useful, and so it's reasonable to assume it gives useful information by default, not "after customizing it". It currently tells people to have "breakfast" and "lunch". That's misleading at best, as those words are tied to ambiguous times, and don't result in a healthy eating schedule. So even better: don't use meal names, use words like "shortly after waking up", "halfway through your day", etc. and then let people customise _those_ to map to words like "breakfast" or "lunch" if that's what they map to for them.
flurie 7y ago
I’ve used both this and Platejoy, and I prefer the latter. It may have changed, but Eat This Much would routinely prescribe strange meals to meet desired macro targets. I remember one being a can of tuna, a raw red pepper, and a slice of cheddar.
sushisource 7y ago
For people with a big calorie budget (I put in 3k) the suggestions are pretty hilarious. EX: This breakfast 3 ham and cottage cheese sandwich (eww, btw) 1 Whole wheat toast The way it starts just adding more servings of things instead of more variety is a bit amusing
- papa_bear 7y ago
  If you have a big calorie budget, try bumping up the meal's complexity from Simple to Moderate (via the 3-dot menu next to the meal). We should probably do that by default if you enter more than a certain number of calories.
tpolm 7y ago
Nice idea, though it did not work for me: - there is difference between carbs from glycemic load perspective - e.g. white rice vs oatmeal are totally different carbs for the same carb amount. You may think that you eat right amount of calories but your excess fat will not start to get metabolized if your insulin levels are high because of regular fast carbs intake. - same thing for "fat" - olive oil vs pork - no breakdown of saturated/unsaturated fats - seems important for eating healthy
- PeterStuer 7y ago
  The bigger problem is we know so much less about the human body than we pretend. Everyone in this industry is falsely projecting confidence and giving wildly extrapolated advice on the basis of very fractionary projections of a highly dimensional complex system. Eat moderate amounts of many different low processed foods' is by far the most rational advice, but sadly at odds with a food and diet industry that wants you to consume.
Apocryphon 7y ago
For lunch I get a chocolate milkshake and avocado. Delicious. Nutritious?
jazoom 7y ago
I'd like to use this with my patients but we use kilojoules, not calories.
mastazi 7y ago
I have used this one for a few weeks, several months ago. At the time, there were 2 main issues: * The food selection was too US-centric - for example, where I live items like sausages tend to have a different nutritional content compared to their US counterparts. I think these types of food should have localised versions. * Weird portions once you select Metric: for example there were a lot of foods where the default quantity was 28.34 grams - I suspect because that's an ounce in the US.
- papa_bear 7y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! 1) This is true, we are pretty US centric at the moment. Most of our basic-food nutrition data comes from the USDA database, so that biases it a bit. We have some ideas for making it easier to localize the suggested foods, but it might be a little while before we get it in there. 2) We should probably round the numbers there a bit, but you're right, we just convert things like ounces to grams if you select metric units.
JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago
I'd like to be able to skip breakfast with the tool. When you select 2 meals, you get breakfast & lunch. With 3, it adds dinner. I want 2 meals, but lunch & dinner.
reinkaos 7y ago
I like the idea. It would be great if they could extend it to show macros and let you choose a goal (e.g. build muscle, loose fat). In that regard I really like Scooby's meal planner: http://www.custommealplanner.com/ http://www.custommealplanner.com/
- Doingmything123 7y ago
  They do let you choose a goal? Lose weight, maintain, build muscle.
orky56 7y ago
This is amazing especially with the vegetarian options. I saw some comments about issues within a meal. I find it to be a creative way to get outside my comfort zone. However I do see 2 meals in the same day that are too similar. Some days have 2 meals with sandwiches for each while others don't even have a sandwich. If you can optimize the algorithm to address this variety issue, I am much more likely to follow it more strictly. Thanks for providing this service!
SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
I don’t really want 2 protein smoothies and a spinach salad for lunch. Or... 2 servings of banana almond butter with 2 servings of peanut butter and carrots. Nice idea, needs work.
braindongle 7y ago
This is a good idea well implemented. There is much bemoaning the state of web experiences these days. Visiting this site and poking around, trying out their onboarding workflow, and seeing initial results, provides a welcome counterpoint. I'm in for the free plan. Now, to do the thing is another matter, of course.
jackthetab 7y ago
A big fan from way back. I was doing the "six snacks a day each less than or equal to 300 calories" a while back. Yes, they do have some weird combos, but the cream cheese + smoked salmon in a tortilla (300 calories) is still a fave breakfast.
rmason 7y ago
You need to offer more questions up front and offer more choices of meals for this to be a product people will actually use as opposed to a demonstration project. Also be cognizant that not everyone cooks.
- aurumpotest 7y ago
  What would you expect a tool like this to suggest for people who don't cook?
  - krageon 7y ago
    I had the opposite problem - with simple meals (the default) it looks like I was barely required to cook at all, just getting recommendations for some carrots and hummus or fruit on bread. I guess that's something you could expect from a tool that doesn't require cooking.
tallbikeguy 7y ago
Nice! My girlfriend is on a low fodmap diet (see https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/fodmaps-101 https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/fodmaps-101 ), it would be awesome if that were a dietary choice...
arcboii92 7y ago
The keto generator needs a bit of work. It was suggesting waaaaay too many carbs. Throwing in things like oranges where bacon would be the better keto option
- papa_bear 7y ago
  Can I ask how many calories you entered? We've made a lot of improvements to hitting low carb targets recently, but maybe not for certain calorie ranges.
  - projektfu 7y ago
    Keto is a fixed 25g
maxander 7y ago
You know, I your heart of hearts, you’re not going to generate a plan on this site and stick to it... but, likewise, you’ll remember roughly what the plan would have been, giving you a slightly better idea of the boundaries of a “good” diet and when you’re in which side of them. And that could add years to your life!
lpghatguy 7y ago
The planner suggests some very peculiar meals, like eating a whole avocado as dinner, or pinapple+cottage cheese with a side of pinapple for lunch. This is essentially the applied version of an xkcd comic titled 'Recipes': https://xkcd.com/720/ https://xkcd.com/720/
- papa_bear 7y ago
  Haha oh man. One time we accidentally added a mostly vodka mixed drink to the public pool of recipes and it started appearing in people's breakfasts... that led to some interesting feedback emails. Was something like the pinapple+cottage cheese with a side of pinapple the first result it gave you, or was that after a few regenerates? I'll have to do some investigating if it thought that was the #1 best result.
  - lpghatguy 7y ago
    Definitely after a few regenerates. I was looking for degenerate cases. :)
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adamiscool8 7y ago
Love the product, and have been following for years, but can you guys fix http://swole.me http://swole.me? I like EatThisMuch but I don't need the meal generation and the fancy features -- I just need a quick and dirty way to create estimated meal plans!
- papa_bear 7y ago
  Ah, looks like the food search killed itself again. Is that what you're referring to? I gotta add some restart watcher to the search process
taurath 7y ago
This is great! Now if only it could track what food I had in my house by scanning receipts, it could tell me what I could make right now! Looks like great execution.
elil17 7y ago
I saw that there’s a warning if someone’s weight loss goal is dangerously fast, which I think is great. The creators should also consider limiting the app from recommending dangerously underweight goals (the app will happily recommend that starve yourself to achieve extremely low BMIs)
ufo 7y ago
This website made me realize that I become completely disoriented if I see a meal plan that isn't built around a base of rice+beans. I wonder if other Latin American people here felt the same.
- evandrofisico 7y ago
  Yes, this so much. Here in Brazil a basic meal includes a nice proportion of rice and beans, with some vegetables and for the onivores, a portion of meat.
treve 7y ago
I'd love to be able to skip breakfast! 2 meals selects breakfast and lunch, but i just want lunch and dinner
- Normal_gaussian 7y ago
  For me, I'd love to weight the meal size. I like a moderate breakfast, small lunch, (relatively) larger dinner. Its generating larger lunches than dinners.
Pfhreak 7y ago
This is rad. Some feedback: 1) Don't require me to choose between Male/Female. Let me leave that blank if I'd prefer. 2) If I put 6 in the 'feet' in height, and nothing in the inches, it probably means I'm 6 feet even. Don't make me go back and type in the 0. 3) Alliums (garlic, onion, leeks, etc) are a common intolerance you might want to consider adding to your list. Mushrooms also? 4) The vegetables list is not alphabetized (sprouts appears dead in the middle of the list) 5) Why is Sugar in the 'Grains' category?
- torgian 7y ago
  5) because it comes in... Grainular form? ... I’ll see myself out now.
- papa_bear 7y ago
  1) We've gotten this request a few times before, but we use a standard calorie estimation equation that depends on this. Not quite sure what the alternative should be. 2) Good point, will add it to our to-do list. 3) Also good idea - in the meantime, you can add text filters at the bottom of the suggestions list for anything we missed. If it matches anything in the recipe name or ingredients, it'll exclude the recipe. 4 & 5) Definitely a little weird, and surprised no one has mentioned this before. Maybe recently changed? Added to the to-do list too.
  - deleted 7y ago
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  - La1n 7y ago
    Last time I used it I ran into the problem at it sometimes was too specific with the ingredients I already had. For example; I have 5kg of rice, it would recommend me only recipes with that type of rice. While I understand that some recipes are better with long grain or short grain, at the time I was hoping to find an option to have my rice substitute "any" rice. Is there a solution for this?
  - zo1 7y ago
    For 1, you could just use the average of the two values and mention it to the user.
cortesoft 7y ago
Any plans on adding family support? It would be cool if you could put in our whole family's needs and it generate a meal plan for everyone.
projektfu 7y ago
What people need is a plan to buy groceries for n days (likely 7 but may be 3, 4 or 1) and a list of meals for each day. That are good. Make it specific to singles and it’ll be really cool.
- papa_bear 7y ago
  That's pretty close to what we do - we fill in a calendar with suggested meals to hit your nutrition goals and give you a grocery list, which you can change the # of days on. It works well for singles, though if you're picky, you'll need to configure the options a bit to get meals that you consistently consider "good". Otherwise you'll likely have to regenerate a few of the meals to make sure everything looks good before shopping.
  - projektfu 7y ago
    Ok I’ll look more closely. The first interaction I has suggested a few odd meals and I figured it didn’t make sense to shop for them
    - projektfu 7y ago
      Unfortunately I can’t see how this functionality works without entering credit card info
_ZeD_ 7y ago
I know It has been made for us... But it's really strange to have a "mediterranean" diet with all breakfast only with eggs
TACIXAT 7y ago
This was a lot of fun but on my second set of options on mobile I got a sign up wall. I bounced. If I had played around more I almost certainly would have shared it to my girlfriend.
brailsafe 7y ago
I feel like the calculations could use a bit of tweaking.
Semaphor 7y ago
This looks really cool. I’ll play around with it a bit next year, but just from the first look, I might want premium :) One suggestion: When selecting a ketogenic diet, change carb-target to net carbs automatically, or have a note telling one that this is an option. One question: I found the family/couple planning article [0], is there a plan to expand this in the future so it’s easier? [0]: https://help.eatthismuch.com/help/how-does-the-family-meal-planning-work https://help.eatthismuch.com/help/how-does-the-family-meal-p...
- papa_bear 7y ago
  That's great to hear, thanks! Re: your suggestion, I think it's supposed to switch to net carbs automatically - did it not do this for you? For family meal planning, are you looking to have it meet two people's different targets? The simplest approach might be if we let you add a second person and you can set a % of your intake that they should eat, but then you'll likely have to weigh some fraction of their servings to have any accuracy (or at least some good eye-balling). Is that doable for you? I'm not sure there's an easily workable solution if the other family members need their own custom targets.
  - Semaphor 7y ago
    Auto switching: Nope, I was wondering why the generation was higher than my 20g target, after switching to net carbs it showed 17 for the day. Family: I’d be fine with weighing. I’d love to be able to add a second person and set their calories goal, then have the meal planner spit out meals for the combined target while showing weight/percentage for each person.
ggregoire 7y ago
Why is 4 meals the default option? Do Americans usually eat 4 meals a day?
- anchpop 7y ago
  It's breakfast, lunch, dinner and a snack
- dawnerd 7y ago
  Why’d you jump right to “Americans”? There’s plenty of other countries with as many meals as us.
  - ggregoire 7y ago
    Because the site is US-centric. And 4 meals a day is not that common and it's definitely unnecessary for most people. If that's their goal, I hope people eating 4 meals a day realize they would lose weight by eating only 2 meals a day (without having to change what they eat).
logicallee 7y ago
This is amazing.
NumberCruncher 7y ago
I don't want to be that guy, but looking at the first photo on this site made me think "you can eat whatever you want if your hobby is running in the mud with a sandbag on your shoulders".
officehero 7y ago
SOYLENT, SOYLENT, SOYLENT, SOYLENT ...
intruder 7y ago
I love the loading text Combobulate calories... Chopping onions... Crying because of onions...
funnygrass 7y ago
I also recommend you to try the alternative, swole.me. Personally, I like the recommendations better.
inertiatic 7y ago
I wanted to create something like this ~10 years ago when I got into fitness! In fact, a few years later I decided to get serious about it and found out that this had launched and gave up on the idea. Obviously, it seems super useful as a starting point. In order to be a real meal planning option however you'd have to optimize for micro-nutrients in the long term, and I'm pretty sure this isn't covered.
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chronicler 7y ago
Surely this data can't be right, I'm 5 foot 7 and 84kg, this has recommended 3100 calories a day. Won't that just make me gain loads of weight?
- krageon 7y ago
  It depends on how much muscle mass you have, which it should at least approximate properly unless you did not enter the bodyfat percentage correctly. I think this just uses an average base metabolic rate as well, so if you fall significantly outside of that norm (much slower than expected, for example) then that will skew the results towards the wrong end of the scale also.
- treerock 7y ago
  I could only replicate that by setting the activity level to 'very active' (hard exercise 6-7 days per week). At 'lightly active' it recommends closer to 2400. Seems reasonable.
victorbojica 7y ago
This looks very interesting, but i think something is wrong with it. For 2 meals and 1900 calories, one meal contains 2 avocados, 300g of tuna and a few other stuff. Isn't it a bit excessive ?
antihero 7y ago
This seems really cool, be nice if there was an option to localise units and currencies. Feels very US-centric.
alkank 7y ago
This looked really exciting at first and I signed-up immediately, hoping to stop thinking about "what I should cook tonight?". However after seeing an Oreo milkshake suggestion for lunch time I'm not sure how healthy the recipes are. If the diet selection included a low-sugar option, then it may be much more useful for me.
- papa_bear 7y ago
  One of our philosophies is that we don't enforce our own beliefs about what's healthy or not. What's healthy depends largely on the person (and everyone has different opinions), but we're there to help with portioning to make sure you're not eating too much or too little. For a lifter trying to gain weight, a milkshake might be perfectly fine. For someone trying to lose, it's probably not the most satiating choice, but as long as it fits your targets, shouldn't throw you off your goals. For those people, you can hit the refresh button in the meal until you see something you're happy with. Not to say there isn't room for improvement - we should probably remove things like milkshakes if your goal is to lose weight, or maybe limit them to marked cheat-days.
  - riversflow 7y ago
    >For a lifter trying to gain weight, a milkshake might be perfectly fine. Y’all should look into insulin resistance. Huge loads of sugar being bad for you is fairly settled science, with foods that have a High Glycemic Index(GI) being linked to the development of Insulin Resistance. This is only the most tested link between high GI foods and higher all cause mortality[1]. The linked study is on a population of high Cardiovascular risk, however considering the website is for dieting that might make it more relevant. There’s a good reason the WHO guideline for sugar is a maximum of 10% of your caloric intake and a recommendation if 5%.[2] I want to eat 1800 kcal in 2 vegetarian meals and a sample suggestion is 3 eggs and veggies(which is great) for the first meal, followed by 2 apples and almond butter and 2 bananas with yogurt for the second(labeled lunch). That’s terrible, and going to set my diet up for failure. That’s like 18% of your caloric intake as sugar, and in your last meal no less. You are going to burn through all that sugar and then feel hungry/hangry as hell when the insulin load in your body doesn’t match your blood sugar. Seriously, the way your website treats sugar is completely negligent considering it’s proposition is that it’s an alternative to counting macros. I’d love to be able to suggest your website but my impression today is awful. [1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4176720/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4176720/ [2]https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/sugar-guideline/en/ https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/sugar-gui...
deleted 7y ago
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maury91 7y ago
The food choice is US-centric as already pointed out, I want to add that doesn't impact only the macros, but also the prices and availability. For example foods like Buckwheat and Peanut Butter are hard to find in Italy (at least in my region), and when you find them are very expensive (example Buckwheat is around 2£/KG in the UK and around 15€/KG in Italy). Regarding the macros, the change of proteins, based on the nation is impressive. Example: Best cottage cheese I can find in Italy: 7% Carbs, 0% Fats, 93% Proteins https://www.myfitnesspal.com/it/food/calories/naturella-fiocchi-di-latte-light-472127919 https://www.myfitnesspal.com/it/food/calories/naturella-fioc... Best cottage cheese I can find in UK: 11% Carbs, 26% Fats, 63% Proteins https://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/light-cottage-cheese-200g-502275010 https://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/light-cottage-che... Best "cottage cheese" I can find in Lithuania: 11% Carbs, 0% Fatas, 89% Proteins https://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/liesa-varske-0-5-62189974 https://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/liesa-varske-0-5-... You could add in the receipt the macros of the ingredient we need to use, in this way at the super market I can scan various of them and search the closest one
- ShinTakuya 7y ago
  This. I was excited for it a year or two ago, but even in Australia which tends to be somewhat similar to the US it was difficult to follow it. I'm sure it varies by state too, it's probably what you find in Californian supermarkets or something. It really needs to separate the dishes by region if it's going to succeed internationally. I'd pay good money for this service if it had the exact cheap ingredients in my local supermarkets.
- froh42 7y ago
  And being US-centric means a lot of the choices a quite gross and really unappealing for people in other countries. Buttered toast? Peanut butter and honey? Yuck, I'd rather not eat at all.
  - mywacaday 7y ago
    I selected keto and it suggested an arugula salad for lunch that had 61 calories, no thanks!
dalore 7y ago
How on Earth did we survive/evolve to this point without counting our calories/macros? The stone age man must have been so obese and unhealthy without all this modern counting tools. Or perhaps we need to count calories and macros because we are eating processed junk. Eating real food and your body responds correctly. I find it sad that society has come to this level.
- _def 7y ago
  Just another result of everyone wanting everything faster, cheaper & easier. The greedy urge to get more profit drives companies to work against people.
- aldanor 7y ago
  The stone age man wasn't spending half a day sitting staring at a screen either and was probably more physically active overall...
  - robohoe 7y ago
    Exactly, Stone Age man had to hunt his food and that meant hiking/hunting all day long until you found some game. And then there were days where you had to go a day or a few without eating anything other than some berries.
    - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      A priori that story seems right. But surely early man still had to survive Winter, so they actually would have had techniques to store and preserve foods (smoking, drying) and so would likely have picked a pile of berries/nuts and carried them to ration over the time spent hunting, or kept dried meat to hand? For sure you'd also have days where you'd eaten all the food, just as people do now.
      - frankbreetz 7y ago
        Early man lived in places without winter
jwally 7y ago
About Food Choice: Can I flip the concept and say “I want my diet to look like {{this}} and want to eat a pizza” and it tells me how much pizza to eat PLUS what from my diet I’m lacking, and make suggestions that could help make up the difference (a protein shake with a,b, and c)?
- jwally 7y ago
  I played with the concept a couple of years ago (mathfood.com as a proof of concept / toy / abandoned side project); and for me it was easier to build a meal I wanted to eat; plug it in; and it would tell me how much to eat PLUS what I was short on macros. Those, I would plug with supplements (protein powder, fish oil pills, fruit). Not fun, but you hit your macros...
  - papa_bear 7y ago
    I think we emailed a bit many years back :) I like the idea behind mathfood, and thought it would make a really cool tool, like a smoothie-builder that figured out the right portions for your macro targets to round out your day's targets. Never got around to adding it as our main focus for a while has been to tone down the app's complexity, but maybe someday.
    - jwally 7y ago
      We did. Kudos on your success!
mmmBacon 7y ago
I like this idea but it’s a bit worrying to me that this company doesn’t seem to have a nutritionist on staff. Seems to me that’s a key missing element Of an otherwise great idea.
g00gler 7y ago
My only complaint is if I pick “2 meals” it shows breakfast and lunch rather than lunch and dinner and I can’t get it to flip. Anyone know how to fix that? Edit: even if I pick 3 meals, it comes up with a snack. I just want breakfast and dinner, is that bad?
- el_cujo 7y ago
  Had the same thought. I find it very easy to skip breakfast and still not feel the need to go overboard at lunch but I have a hard time falling asleep if I didn't eat a filling dinner. Lunch + dinner only lifestyle fits me much better than breakfast + lunch only, I know a lot of people who try to fast from 8 PM to noon who do the same.
k__ 7y ago
Raw carrots and plain greek yogurt. Does this thing even try?
- Wh1zz 7y ago
  Actually sounds like a pretty cool snack - I'll try that first thing next, thanks!
  - k__ 7y ago
    It wasn't even suggested as one meal. Carrots were lunch and yogurt was part of the breakfast. So by commenting some random stuff I made better choices than this app, haha
    - papa_bear 7y ago
      Thanks for the feedback! If you want more interesting recipes to choose from, try bumping up the meal complexity. We set most meals to "simple" by default because most people, when they feed themselves, aren't cooking every single meal of the day, and it's easier to stick to a meal plan and not get lazy when things are simpler. That said, one of the main goals of the tool is to handle figuring out portioning for you. If you find you don't like any of our recipes, you can enter your own recipes and the generator will incorporate it into the plans. Also, I'll probably bump up the default meal complexity right now since that seems to be a source of a lot of feedback in this thread.
yohannparis 7y ago
Where is the pricing page? I do not want to sign up for a service that I cannot afford later on, or that looks like a scam.
drakonka 7y ago
It seems at first glance that there is no way to pick that you are both a vegetarian and want to follow a ketogenic diet. They are not mutually exclusive in real life, but in the diet-preference-picker on the website this seems to be the case.
- papa_bear 7y ago
  Once you create a basic account you can customize the food preferences however you like. The preset diet options simply pre-select some food exclusions for you, but you can select "anything" and create your own set of exclusions from scratch. As a forewarning, keto + vegetarian or vegan is one of the tougher things for our algorithms to do well. Maybe we're missing some critical recipes that keto vegetarians use, but it eliminates something like 90% of our available recipes.
jonahrd 7y ago
Haha it keeps suggesting I eat 4 hard boiled eggs in the morning.... I'll pass
turrini 7y ago
Would be nice to suggest water intake too
HJain13 7y ago
There should be an option to skip egg for vegetarian people...
- dawnerd 7y ago
  There should be all sorts of options. I don’t eat fish so that basically puts me in the vegetarian or vegan categories even though I’m neither.
  - monadgonad 7y ago
    You can exclude just about any common specific ingredient, including eggs, fish and even specific kinds of fish.
Valk3_ 7y ago
I don't see the technical aspects of this project being discussed as much. Could you the author share some of the technical difficulties with a project like this? For instance, what were the hardest part to make this work? What are some improvements that you are planning on doing? Since it seems that the planner still has room for improvements as can be seen in the discussions here.
DBYCZ 7y ago
This is awesome, but doesn't seem to work for people looking to gain healthy weight. 5,000 calories/day is hard enough without needing to eat 3 bowls of corn flakes and 9 cups of greek yogurt for breakfast.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
  As a food addict I don't think this kind of statement will ever make sense to me. I have to work ridiculously hard at not consuming 5k Calories or more a day. When I weighed twice as much as I do now, 5k/meal wasn't unheard of. That anyone can describe eating as hard baffles me.
leshow 7y ago
I doesn't allow you to select macronutrient breakdown. Selecting calories is all well and good, but I would like to also select the macro ratios
mr_gibbins 7y ago
Good idea but poor execution. Asking for 1,500kcal over two meals, I was presented with tomato & onion on toast and an apple for breakfast, and tuna salad & avocado plus a bowl of carrots for lunch. Ideally I would have been able to choose lunch + dinner, and something a bit more exciting - plus, I don't really like tuna!
- papa_bear 7y ago
  If you click the 3-dot menu next to a meal's name you can edit that meal's settings, including changing things from Breakfast to Lunch. You'll probably also want to bump up the Complexity setting from Simple to Moderate to get some more interesting things.
cowpewter 7y ago
I love this idea, but I think it needs a little work... maybe something that helps it avoid combining foods that are too similar into the same meal? For breakfast, it keeps suggesting I eat a "high protein omelet" and 4 hard boiled eggs. That's a lot of egg in one meal. I don't want an omelet AND boiled eggs at the same time.
casion 7y ago
Food Allergies. Please support food allergies. If it is supported, it is difficult to tell, and thusly I can't use the service.
- wilkystyle 7y ago
  The "I don't want to eat" screen under "Food Preferences" allows a pretty wide variety of exclusions.
cdoan 7y ago
Christmas dinner with low fat
eithed 7y ago
Today I'll be eating 6 portions of carrots, radishes for dinner
MuffinFlavored 7y ago
I want to be able to do 1 meal a day, but dinner instead of auto assuming breakfast.
tarsinge 7y ago
Very interesting to get ideas (as someone already used to counting macros). The default macro ratio seems a bit high in protein, personally I would recommend lowering a bit the carbs and upping the fat. Also from my experience (lost 25kgs 15 years ago, fit) aiming to lower carbs in western diet usually has the side effect to forcing lower calories, not because you eat less carbs per se, but because a lot of food that can be abused and/or that are junk are carb based. I you aim for low carb and high fat/protein you automatically are looking at the better nutritional option if you eat out. And things like pasta or pizza are way too easy to refill for me, but with a plate of a protein and side vegetables I feel satiated after one serving. I think keto is too extreme if you are not a nutrition geek, but just aiming at reducing carbs should get you a long way in losing weight and eating more healthy without overthinking it.
top_kekeroni_m8 7y ago
I tried the vegan meal planner but was a bit disappointed. I love the UI, good job. The value of the planner - not so much. It pretty much kept recommending meals like sandwiches and tofu smoothies and tofu stir-fries or stuff like hummus without any bread lol. Would be awesome if you had a wfpb (whole-food plant-based) options as I feel like that is the healthiest possible diet one can follow (no animal products, no oil, low fat, no highly processed foods). It would probably be a bit harder than the usual american diets, but oh well. I wish you all the luck with your product!
damiananders 7y ago
Do you know how many parts of an insect are in each jar? According to Scientific American, each of us eats about 0.5-1kg of flies, maggots and other bugs a year, hidden in the chocolate we eat, the grains we consume, the peanut butter we spread on toast. According to US regulations (which are easier to access than Australian data), 125g of pasta (a single portion) may contain an average of 125 insect fragments or more, and a cup of raisins can have a maximum of 33 fruit fly eggs. A kilogram of flour probably has 15g of animal product in it, from rodent excreta to weevils to cockroach legs.

483 points by sogen 7y ago

ericd 7y ago

Heh perfect for about 13ish days from now...

iamwil 7y ago
Haha. You have control over the menu?
- ericd 7y ago
  You’re right, definitely don’t :-)

BadassFractal 7y ago

Slightly overkill, but just as a thought experiment, it would be neat to have something where you declare calories / macros / food preferences, how much time you have to cook and how many cheat days you want. Then the system will figure out all of the ingredients for you, ship them to you through Instacart on a regular basis, put reminders on your calendar for when you should cook what, and optimize both for nutrition, variety, time and food waste.

papa_bear 7y ago
We have some features for most of these things, but you have to dig a bit for it. To edit the macro targets: https://imgur.com/u08DLNy https://imgur.com/u08DLNy To change cook times, click the 3-dot menu next to the meal, and then when you regenerate, the plans will match whatever your latest settings have been changed to. You can create a free account and use the single day generator, plus use it as a tracker, but with the subscription, we'll send you a weekly grocery list that you can export to Instacart (or amazon fresh) for delivery.

foolinaround 7y ago

this is very nice UI, and with some improvements, would be very handy. Some feedback - 1) It should provide additional filters like 'gluten-free', 'histamine-intolerant' etc. 2) When I suggest 2 meals, it assumes that it is breakfast & lunch - when I might be thinking - lunch and dinner. Allow user to pick the option. 3) When it provides me the choices - lets say breakfast - eggs, onions and tomato omlet, then it should list these 3 ingredients - and i am allergic to 'tomato' - i can then scratch it off and ask it to 'refine' -- the next time, it should not return dishes that have tomato in them as a main dish.

papa_bear 7y ago
The food filters are pretty limited until you create a basic account. Then you can do gluten free or any keyword based exclusions, but we don't have any data to factor in histamine intolerance. You can also edit the meal settings if you click the 3-dot menu next to the meal name, or we have a "Week layout" editor that you can use to mix/match meals. You can also give a "thumbs down" to specific ingredients like tomatoes and it will exclude recipes that have them on future regenerates. We've tried to cram a lot of features into the app, but now one of our biggest challenges is managing the complexity and surfacing the most useful things people want. So this is very useful feedback to know what comes to mind first when you use the app :)

papa_bear 7y ago

Noticed a bit of a load spike, cool to see our site posted on HN :) Let me know if you have any feedback or questions and I'll do my best to respond.

dan1234 7y ago
Why, when I chose metric on registration do I get my meals in ounces? There doesn't appear to be any way to delete my account.
- papa_bear 7y ago
  It should auto-convert units like ounces and pounds, but I'm not 100% sure if it does on the apps. As a fallback, we show gram weights on everything, but obviously not the most convenient to bust out a scale all the time. To delete your account, click your username -> membership status -> delete account.
appleiigs 7y ago
I do one-meal-a-day. The website returned 18 servings of egg and 10 slices of bread. Maybe there should be a maximum serving per meal.
- papa_bear 7y ago
  Oof yeah. It's currently configured to max out at 3 servings unless a meal's target is >1500 calories, and then it uncaps. That's caused a few complaints, so we'll likely revert it. One workaround in the meantime is to ask for more meals, and then just eat them all at once :) You can also drag items between meals if you want to reorg them.
batesy 7y ago
This is really nice. I love the UI, and am probably going use pieces as inspiration for something very unrelated I'm building. Are you building this as a side gig? How many hours per week is going into it?

dandanio 7y ago

Drop the login: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/login-walls/ https://www.nngroup.com/articles/login-walls/

_august 7y ago
Don't they? Or are you saying this site is a good example of doing that?
- papa_bear 7y ago
  Our mobile app doesn't have the demo generator, which is maybe what he tried first? Something we might add in the future.
- dandanio 7y ago
  From a UX experience, I think you'd be more successful if you would let the user experience everything your site has to offer and if they decide to continue (or stay with the site, save their prefs and eventually - become paying customers) - give them an option to create an account, because according to the latest research in UX, any login walls (even the FREE account ones) are detrimental. Check the article I linked above.

mellowdream 7y ago

This is a cool idea that I'd personally love to see work in some form or another. In my experience, though, the tedium of tracking macros and the like has probably been the biggest obstacle for being consistent. When I cut now, just maintaining some very simple principles like "eat less, eat vegetables, it's OK to feel hungry" has been vastly more useful long-term than weighing food on scales and calculating BMI every week... But maybe that's just me. This solution might make for a nice compromise.

TheAdamAndChe 7y ago
When I first started learning about and applying personal finance principles, I counted every dollar going in and out of my accounts, made projections, and planned for everything. This conscious effort very effectively changed my spending habits to the point where finance principals are now second nature. For many people, getting started with dieting requires(or is at least helped by) such a conscious effort too.
allovernow 7y ago
>eat less, eat vegetables, it's OK to feel hungry I think one of the biggest things a person can do is move away from the three daily meal regimen that as I understand is a relatively modern invention. After a few weeks or so you don't miss breakfast anymore, especially if you're the type to drink coffee in the morning.
- slothtrop 7y ago
  Right but merely skipping breakfast won't ensure you'll consume fewer calories in a day. There are recorded advantages to breakfast consumption with regards to metabolism etc. It's worth experimenting to suit preference. Maybe when trying to run a deficit, skipping is easier, but that doesn't apply to me.
  - leetcrew 7y ago
    part of the problem is that the conventional american breakfast (cereal, fruit, maybe some toast) is almost entirely carbs. unless you go to the trouble of frying some eggs, you're getting off to a bad start that will leave you crashing by the end of the morning and overeating at lunch.

jbverschoor 7y ago

I use fitchef.nl. Weekly tailored menu with delivery integration of the biggest supermarket

papa_bear 7y ago
Interesting, will check it out. Thanks!

crooked-v 7y ago

I feel like the need to log in and the way the signup is structured obscure what's the actual most potentially valuable part of this service to me, which is the integration with Instacart. It's also not clear how well that integration would actually work in practice, which makes me pretty wary about it.

papa_bear 7y ago
Good point. The instacart integration works alright, but could be better if we had a tighter integration. We basically send them a text version of the grocery list and they just show searched matches for each item that you have in your grocery list. For some idea, here's a screenshot of the grocery list page, and a link to the Instacart order page where you choose the matches (although Instacart's page is down for me right now): Grocery list: https://imgur.com/F6lsdXi https://imgur.com/F6lsdXi Order page: https://www.instacart.com/store/partner_recipe?guest=true&partner_name=eatthismuch&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.eatthismuch.com%2Fpantry%2Fformatted-groceries%2Fd974d0bc13770%2F%3Ft%3D1576801353%26prefer_organic%3Dfalse&utm_campaign=eatthismuch_grocerylist&utm_medium=recipe_api&utm_source=partner_eatthismuch https://www.instacart.com/store/partner_recipe?guest=true&pa...

Proven 7y ago

This must be Peak Misery - to accept to listen to a computer when it comes to matters that computer has no business deciding for you

hthtegr 7y ago

Brilliant, love it. If only there were more vegan recipes

saagarjha 7y ago

You may want to add a similarity checker on the foods. I put in "vegetarian" and got the profoundly stimulating options of "mashed chickpeas" and "carrots with hummus" for lunch.

nkozyra 7y ago

I like the idea but it's producing a lot of ... unappealing combos like peanut butter and honey ... sandwich? on ... rye? With a random side of red pepper hummus? I think what's missing is some graph of compatible ingredients per type of food. Things that generally require some companion (what am I eating that hummus with?) You could generate a pizza via compatibility scores. Same with curries, sandwiches, etc. And of course hinting at the type of macros one might want. 60% of my diet as fat is probably not a good regular day. But very compelling. I struggle with meal planning and the state of recipes and meals and the seo gamesmanship makes the whole thing very arduous.

fredsanford 7y ago
FWIW, Peanut butter and a drizzle of honey on rye is one of my goto sandwiches...
- nkozyra 7y ago
  I have peanut butter and honey often, but on a single piece of toast. And not for dinner, typically :)
logicchains 7y ago
In Australia at least, peanut butter and honey sandwiches are a thing. The taste is actually not bad, and it is possibly healthier than peanut butter and jam sandwiches.
- aussiegeek 7y ago
  I'm curious where this is a thing more specifically, never heard of this living in Victoria and Queensland
  - zbentley 7y ago
    This was often a food for kids (<10yo) in Utah, USA, and other rocky mountain states.
  - 7y ago

dang 7y ago

First discussed in 2012: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4359542 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4359542 A large Show HN in 2013: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5640336 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5640336

edoo 7y ago

I highly recommend keto. If you eat fast carbs when your glycogen reserves are full your body will turn it to fat immediately leaving you feeling hungry again even though you met your caloric needs for the day. The natural response is to eat more leading to obesity. If you nail the keto diet you don't have to plan your meals and go hungry in between to stay in shape. You can eat whenever you feel like it. That does mean your only carbs come from veggies. The calories from fast carbs should be replaced with animal fat, not protein. If you eat too much protein it gets converted directly to sugar anyway and is harder on your kidneys. I lost dozens of pounds without going hungry (except for that initial fast carb addiction breaking) or counting calories.

ahnick 7y ago
> If you eat too much protein it gets converted directly to sugar anyway and is harder on your kidneys. It is true that the process of gluconeogenesis can convert excess protein into glucose; however, I understand that it is very much an open question as to how much of the excess protein will actually be converted in an individual. For instance diabetics apparently experience a higher rate of protein catabolism due to insulin deficiencies than non-diabetics.
- edoo 7y ago
  After rereading what I wrote I realize I made a mistake. It is about spiking your blood sugar which fast carbs do that leads to premature hunger. If you haven't filled your glycogen reserves you avoid the insulin spike, and if they are full the insulin spike is likely causing metabolic damage on top of the future needless hunger. Regarding the protein I swear I've seen low carb studies somewhere that did not improve diabetic conditions but they were all super high in protein. True moderate protein keto seems to be getting rid of at least pre diabetic conditions.

TheRealPomax 7y ago

It would be nice if I could indicate which meals are important to me if I pick fewer than 3 meals a day. Breakfast and lunch is not a winning combination, whereas "that small meal at 10:30 that doesn't really have a name" and "that meal at 5pm that doesn't have a name" would be useful.

papa_bear 7y ago
Hit the 3-dot menu next to a meal's name to edit its settings. You can change the name (among other things), but it might complain if you try to reuse one of the default names.
- TheRealPomax 7y ago
  That's not what I care about if I just need a recommendation instead of making this website my religion. I have no desire to become intimate with this website: it seems useful, and so it's reasonable to assume it gives useful information by default, not "after customizing it". It currently tells people to have "breakfast" and "lunch". That's misleading at best, as those words are tied to ambiguous times, and don't result in a healthy eating schedule. So even better: don't use meal names, use words like "shortly after waking up", "halfway through your day", etc. and then let people customise _those_ to map to words like "breakfast" or "lunch" if that's what they map to for them.

flurie 7y ago

I’ve used both this and Platejoy, and I prefer the latter. It may have changed, but Eat This Much would routinely prescribe strange meals to meet desired macro targets. I remember one being a can of tuna, a raw red pepper, and a slice of cheddar.

sushisource 7y ago

For people with a big calorie budget (I put in 3k) the suggestions are pretty hilarious. EX: This breakfast 3 ham and cottage cheese sandwich (eww, btw) 1 Whole wheat toast The way it starts just adding more servings of things instead of more variety is a bit amusing

papa_bear 7y ago
If you have a big calorie budget, try bumping up the meal's complexity from Simple to Moderate (via the 3-dot menu next to the meal). We should probably do that by default if you enter more than a certain number of calories.

tpolm 7y ago

Nice idea, though it did not work for me: - there is difference between carbs from glycemic load perspective - e.g. white rice vs oatmeal are totally different carbs for the same carb amount. You may think that you eat right amount of calories but your excess fat will not start to get metabolized if your insulin levels are high because of regular fast carbs intake. - same thing for "fat" - olive oil vs pork - no breakdown of saturated/unsaturated fats - seems important for eating healthy

PeterStuer 7y ago
The bigger problem is we know so much less about the human body than we pretend. Everyone in this industry is falsely projecting confidence and giving wildly extrapolated advice on the basis of very fractionary projections of a highly dimensional complex system. Eat moderate amounts of many different low processed foods' is by far the most rational advice, but sadly at odds with a food and diet industry that wants you to consume.

Apocryphon 7y ago

For lunch I get a chocolate milkshake and avocado. Delicious. Nutritious?

jazoom 7y ago

I'd like to use this with my patients but we use kilojoules, not calories.

mastazi 7y ago

I have used this one for a few weeks, several months ago. At the time, there were 2 main issues: * The food selection was too US-centric - for example, where I live items like sausages tend to have a different nutritional content compared to their US counterparts. I think these types of food should have localised versions. * Weird portions once you select Metric: for example there were a lot of foods where the default quantity was 28.34 grams - I suspect because that's an ounce in the US.

papa_bear 7y ago
Thanks for the feedback! 1) This is true, we are pretty US centric at the moment. Most of our basic-food nutrition data comes from the USDA database, so that biases it a bit. We have some ideas for making it easier to localize the suggested foods, but it might be a little while before we get it in there. 2) We should probably round the numbers there a bit, but you're right, we just convert things like ounces to grams if you select metric units.

JMTQp8lwXL 7y ago

I'd like to be able to skip breakfast with the tool. When you select 2 meals, you get breakfast & lunch. With 3, it adds dinner. I want 2 meals, but lunch & dinner.

reinkaos 7y ago

I like the idea. It would be great if they could extend it to show macros and let you choose a goal (e.g. build muscle, loose fat). In that regard I really like Scooby's meal planner: http://www.custommealplanner.com/ http://www.custommealplanner.com/

Doingmything123 7y ago
They do let you choose a goal? Lose weight, maintain, build muscle.

orky56 7y ago

This is amazing especially with the vegetarian options. I saw some comments about issues within a meal. I find it to be a creative way to get outside my comfort zone. However I do see 2 meals in the same day that are too similar. Some days have 2 meals with sandwiches for each while others don't even have a sandwich. If you can optimize the algorithm to address this variety issue, I am much more likely to follow it more strictly. Thanks for providing this service!

SlowRobotAhead 7y ago

I don’t really want 2 protein smoothies and a spinach salad for lunch. Or... 2 servings of banana almond butter with 2 servings of peanut butter and carrots. Nice idea, needs work.

braindongle 7y ago

This is a good idea well implemented. There is much bemoaning the state of web experiences these days. Visiting this site and poking around, trying out their onboarding workflow, and seeing initial results, provides a welcome counterpoint. I'm in for the free plan. Now, to do the thing is another matter, of course.

jackthetab 7y ago

A big fan from way back. I was doing the "six snacks a day each less than or equal to 300 calories" a while back. Yes, they do have some weird combos, but the cream cheese + smoked salmon in a tortilla (300 calories) is still a fave breakfast.

rmason 7y ago

You need to offer more questions up front and offer more choices of meals for this to be a product people will actually use as opposed to a demonstration project. Also be cognizant that not everyone cooks.

aurumpotest 7y ago
What would you expect a tool like this to suggest for people who don't cook?
- krageon 7y ago
  I had the opposite problem - with simple meals (the default) it looks like I was barely required to cook at all, just getting recommendations for some carrots and hummus or fruit on bread. I guess that's something you could expect from a tool that doesn't require cooking.

tallbikeguy 7y ago

Nice! My girlfriend is on a low fodmap diet (see https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/fodmaps-101 https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/fodmaps-101 ), it would be awesome if that were a dietary choice...

arcboii92 7y ago

The keto generator needs a bit of work. It was suggesting waaaaay too many carbs. Throwing in things like oranges where bacon would be the better keto option

papa_bear 7y ago
Can I ask how many calories you entered? We've made a lot of improvements to hitting low carb targets recently, but maybe not for certain calorie ranges.
- projektfu 7y ago
  Keto is a fixed 25g

maxander 7y ago

You know, I your heart of hearts, you’re not going to generate a plan on this site and stick to it... but, likewise, you’ll remember roughly what the plan would have been, giving you a slightly better idea of the boundaries of a “good” diet and when you’re in which side of them. And that could add years to your life!

lpghatguy 7y ago

The planner suggests some very peculiar meals, like eating a whole avocado as dinner, or pinapple+cottage cheese with a side of pinapple for lunch. This is essentially the applied version of an xkcd comic titled 'Recipes': https://xkcd.com/720/ https://xkcd.com/720/

papa_bear 7y ago
Haha oh man. One time we accidentally added a mostly vodka mixed drink to the public pool of recipes and it started appearing in people's breakfasts... that led to some interesting feedback emails. Was something like the pinapple+cottage cheese with a side of pinapple the first result it gave you, or was that after a few regenerates? I'll have to do some investigating if it thought that was the #1 best result.
- lpghatguy 7y ago
  Definitely after a few regenerates. I was looking for degenerate cases. :)

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adamiscool8 7y ago

Love the product, and have been following for years, but can you guys fix http://swole.me http://swole.me? I like EatThisMuch but I don't need the meal generation and the fancy features -- I just need a quick and dirty way to create estimated meal plans!

papa_bear 7y ago
Ah, looks like the food search killed itself again. Is that what you're referring to? I gotta add some restart watcher to the search process

taurath 7y ago

This is great! Now if only it could track what food I had in my house by scanning receipts, it could tell me what I could make right now! Looks like great execution.

elil17 7y ago

I saw that there’s a warning if someone’s weight loss goal is dangerously fast, which I think is great. The creators should also consider limiting the app from recommending dangerously underweight goals (the app will happily recommend that starve yourself to achieve extremely low BMIs)

ufo 7y ago

This website made me realize that I become completely disoriented if I see a meal plan that isn't built around a base of rice+beans. I wonder if other Latin American people here felt the same.

evandrofisico 7y ago
Yes, this so much. Here in Brazil a basic meal includes a nice proportion of rice and beans, with some vegetables and for the onivores, a portion of meat.

treve 7y ago

I'd love to be able to skip breakfast! 2 meals selects breakfast and lunch, but i just want lunch and dinner

Normal_gaussian 7y ago
For me, I'd love to weight the meal size. I like a moderate breakfast, small lunch, (relatively) larger dinner. Its generating larger lunches than dinners.

Pfhreak 7y ago

This is rad. Some feedback: 1) Don't require me to choose between Male/Female. Let me leave that blank if I'd prefer. 2) If I put 6 in the 'feet' in height, and nothing in the inches, it probably means I'm 6 feet even. Don't make me go back and type in the 0. 3) Alliums (garlic, onion, leeks, etc) are a common intolerance you might want to consider adding to your list. Mushrooms also? 4) The vegetables list is not alphabetized (sprouts appears dead in the middle of the list) 5) Why is Sugar in the 'Grains' category?

torgian 7y ago
5) because it comes in... Grainular form? ... I’ll see myself out now.
papa_bear 7y ago
1) We've gotten this request a few times before, but we use a standard calorie estimation equation that depends on this. Not quite sure what the alternative should be. 2) Good point, will add it to our to-do list. 3) Also good idea - in the meantime, you can add text filters at the bottom of the suggestions list for anything we missed. If it matches anything in the recipe name or ingredients, it'll exclude the recipe. 4 & 5) Definitely a little weird, and surprised no one has mentioned this before. Maybe recently changed? Added to the to-do list too.
- deleted 7y ago
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- La1n 7y ago
  Last time I used it I ran into the problem at it sometimes was too specific with the ingredients I already had. For example; I have 5kg of rice, it would recommend me only recipes with that type of rice. While I understand that some recipes are better with long grain or short grain, at the time I was hoping to find an option to have my rice substitute "any" rice. Is there a solution for this?
- zo1 7y ago
  For 1, you could just use the average of the two values and mention it to the user.

cortesoft 7y ago

Any plans on adding family support? It would be cool if you could put in our whole family's needs and it generate a meal plan for everyone.

projektfu 7y ago

What people need is a plan to buy groceries for n days (likely 7 but may be 3, 4 or 1) and a list of meals for each day. That are good. Make it specific to singles and it’ll be really cool.

papa_bear 7y ago
That's pretty close to what we do - we fill in a calendar with suggested meals to hit your nutrition goals and give you a grocery list, which you can change the # of days on. It works well for singles, though if you're picky, you'll need to configure the options a bit to get meals that you consistently consider "good". Otherwise you'll likely have to regenerate a few of the meals to make sure everything looks good before shopping.
- projektfu 7y ago
  Ok I’ll look more closely. The first interaction I has suggested a few odd meals and I figured it didn’t make sense to shop for them
  - projektfu 7y ago
    Unfortunately I can’t see how this functionality works without entering credit card info

_ZeD_ 7y ago

I know It has been made for us... But it's really strange to have a "mediterranean" diet with all breakfast only with eggs

TACIXAT 7y ago

This was a lot of fun but on my second set of options on mobile I got a sign up wall. I bounced. If I had played around more I almost certainly would have shared it to my girlfriend.

brailsafe 7y ago

I feel like the calculations could use a bit of tweaking.

Semaphor 7y ago

This looks really cool. I’ll play around with it a bit next year, but just from the first look, I might want premium :) One suggestion: When selecting a ketogenic diet, change carb-target to net carbs automatically, or have a note telling one that this is an option. One question: I found the family/couple planning article [0], is there a plan to expand this in the future so it’s easier? [0]: https://help.eatthismuch.com/help/how-does-the-family-meal-planning-work https://help.eatthismuch.com/help/how-does-the-family-meal-p...

papa_bear 7y ago
That's great to hear, thanks! Re: your suggestion, I think it's supposed to switch to net carbs automatically - did it not do this for you? For family meal planning, are you looking to have it meet two people's different targets? The simplest approach might be if we let you add a second person and you can set a % of your intake that they should eat, but then you'll likely have to weigh some fraction of their servings to have any accuracy (or at least some good eye-balling). Is that doable for you? I'm not sure there's an easily workable solution if the other family members need their own custom targets.
- Semaphor 7y ago
  Auto switching: Nope, I was wondering why the generation was higher than my 20g target, after switching to net carbs it showed 17 for the day. Family: I’d be fine with weighing. I’d love to be able to add a second person and set their calories goal, then have the meal planner spit out meals for the combined target while showing weight/percentage for each person.

ggregoire 7y ago

Why is 4 meals the default option? Do Americans usually eat 4 meals a day?

anchpop 7y ago
It's breakfast, lunch, dinner and a snack
dawnerd 7y ago
Why’d you jump right to “Americans”? There’s plenty of other countries with as many meals as us.
- ggregoire 7y ago
  Because the site is US-centric. And 4 meals a day is not that common and it's definitely unnecessary for most people. If that's their goal, I hope people eating 4 meals a day realize they would lose weight by eating only 2 meals a day (without having to change what they eat).

logicallee 7y ago

This is amazing.

NumberCruncher 7y ago

I don't want to be that guy, but looking at the first photo on this site made me think "you can eat whatever you want if your hobby is running in the mud with a sandbag on your shoulders".

officehero 7y ago

SOYLENT, SOYLENT, SOYLENT, SOYLENT ...

intruder 7y ago

I love the loading text Combobulate calories... Chopping onions... Crying because of onions...

funnygrass 7y ago

I also recommend you to try the alternative, swole.me. Personally, I like the recommendations better.

inertiatic 7y ago

I wanted to create something like this ~10 years ago when I got into fitness! In fact, a few years later I decided to get serious about it and found out that this had launched and gave up on the idea. Obviously, it seems super useful as a starting point. In order to be a real meal planning option however you'd have to optimize for micro-nutrients in the long term, and I'm pretty sure this isn't covered.

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chronicler 7y ago

Surely this data can't be right, I'm 5 foot 7 and 84kg, this has recommended 3100 calories a day. Won't that just make me gain loads of weight?

krageon 7y ago
It depends on how much muscle mass you have, which it should at least approximate properly unless you did not enter the bodyfat percentage correctly. I think this just uses an average base metabolic rate as well, so if you fall significantly outside of that norm (much slower than expected, for example) then that will skew the results towards the wrong end of the scale also.
treerock 7y ago
I could only replicate that by setting the activity level to 'very active' (hard exercise 6-7 days per week). At 'lightly active' it recommends closer to 2400. Seems reasonable.

victorbojica 7y ago

This looks very interesting, but i think something is wrong with it. For 2 meals and 1900 calories, one meal contains 2 avocados, 300g of tuna and a few other stuff. Isn't it a bit excessive ?

antihero 7y ago

This seems really cool, be nice if there was an option to localise units and currencies. Feels very US-centric.

alkank 7y ago

This looked really exciting at first and I signed-up immediately, hoping to stop thinking about "what I should cook tonight?". However after seeing an Oreo milkshake suggestion for lunch time I'm not sure how healthy the recipes are. If the diet selection included a low-sugar option, then it may be much more useful for me.

papa_bear 7y ago
One of our philosophies is that we don't enforce our own beliefs about what's healthy or not. What's healthy depends largely on the person (and everyone has different opinions), but we're there to help with portioning to make sure you're not eating too much or too little. For a lifter trying to gain weight, a milkshake might be perfectly fine. For someone trying to lose, it's probably not the most satiating choice, but as long as it fits your targets, shouldn't throw you off your goals. For those people, you can hit the refresh button in the meal until you see something you're happy with. Not to say there isn't room for improvement - we should probably remove things like milkshakes if your goal is to lose weight, or maybe limit them to marked cheat-days.
- riversflow 7y ago
  >For a lifter trying to gain weight, a milkshake might be perfectly fine. Y’all should look into insulin resistance. Huge loads of sugar being bad for you is fairly settled science, with foods that have a High Glycemic Index(GI) being linked to the development of Insulin Resistance. This is only the most tested link between high GI foods and higher all cause mortality[1]. The linked study is on a population of high Cardiovascular risk, however considering the website is for dieting that might make it more relevant. There’s a good reason the WHO guideline for sugar is a maximum of 10% of your caloric intake and a recommendation if 5%.[2] I want to eat 1800 kcal in 2 vegetarian meals and a sample suggestion is 3 eggs and veggies(which is great) for the first meal, followed by 2 apples and almond butter and 2 bananas with yogurt for the second(labeled lunch). That’s terrible, and going to set my diet up for failure. That’s like 18% of your caloric intake as sugar, and in your last meal no less. You are going to burn through all that sugar and then feel hungry/hangry as hell when the insulin load in your body doesn’t match your blood sugar. Seriously, the way your website treats sugar is completely negligent considering it’s proposition is that it’s an alternative to counting macros. I’d love to be able to suggest your website but my impression today is awful. [1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4176720/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4176720/ [2]https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/sugar-guideline/en/ https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/sugar-gui...

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maury91 7y ago

The food choice is US-centric as already pointed out, I want to add that doesn't impact only the macros, but also the prices and availability. For example foods like Buckwheat and Peanut Butter are hard to find in Italy (at least in my region), and when you find them are very expensive (example Buckwheat is around 2£/KG in the UK and around 15€/KG in Italy). Regarding the macros, the change of proteins, based on the nation is impressive. Example: Best cottage cheese I can find in Italy: 7% Carbs, 0% Fats, 93% Proteins https://www.myfitnesspal.com/it/food/calories/naturella-fiocchi-di-latte-light-472127919 https://www.myfitnesspal.com/it/food/calories/naturella-fioc... Best cottage cheese I can find in UK: 11% Carbs, 26% Fats, 63% Proteins https://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/light-cottage-cheese-200g-502275010 https://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/light-cottage-che... Best "cottage cheese" I can find in Lithuania: 11% Carbs, 0% Fatas, 89% Proteins https://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/liesa-varske-0-5-62189974 https://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/liesa-varske-0-5-... You could add in the receipt the macros of the ingredient we need to use, in this way at the super market I can scan various of them and search the closest one

ShinTakuya 7y ago
This. I was excited for it a year or two ago, but even in Australia which tends to be somewhat similar to the US it was difficult to follow it. I'm sure it varies by state too, it's probably what you find in Californian supermarkets or something. It really needs to separate the dishes by region if it's going to succeed internationally. I'd pay good money for this service if it had the exact cheap ingredients in my local supermarkets.
froh42 7y ago
And being US-centric means a lot of the choices a quite gross and really unappealing for people in other countries. Buttered toast? Peanut butter and honey? Yuck, I'd rather not eat at all.
- mywacaday 7y ago
  I selected keto and it suggested an arugula salad for lunch that had 61 calories, no thanks!

dalore 7y ago

How on Earth did we survive/evolve to this point without counting our calories/macros? The stone age man must have been so obese and unhealthy without all this modern counting tools. Or perhaps we need to count calories and macros because we are eating processed junk. Eating real food and your body responds correctly. I find it sad that society has come to this level.

_def 7y ago
Just another result of everyone wanting everything faster, cheaper & easier. The greedy urge to get more profit drives companies to work against people.
aldanor 7y ago
The stone age man wasn't spending half a day sitting staring at a screen either and was probably more physically active overall...
- robohoe 7y ago
  Exactly, Stone Age man had to hunt his food and that meant hiking/hunting all day long until you found some game. And then there were days where you had to go a day or a few without eating anything other than some berries.
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    A priori that story seems right. But surely early man still had to survive Winter, so they actually would have had techniques to store and preserve foods (smoking, drying) and so would likely have picked a pile of berries/nuts and carried them to ration over the time spent hunting, or kept dried meat to hand? For sure you'd also have days where you'd eaten all the food, just as people do now.
    - frankbreetz 7y ago
      Early man lived in places without winter

jwally 7y ago

About Food Choice: Can I flip the concept and say “I want my diet to look like {{this}} and want to eat a pizza” and it tells me how much pizza to eat PLUS what from my diet I’m lacking, and make suggestions that could help make up the difference (a protein shake with a,b, and c)?

jwally 7y ago
I played with the concept a couple of years ago (mathfood.com as a proof of concept / toy / abandoned side project); and for me it was easier to build a meal I wanted to eat; plug it in; and it would tell me how much to eat PLUS what I was short on macros. Those, I would plug with supplements (protein powder, fish oil pills, fruit). Not fun, but you hit your macros...
- papa_bear 7y ago
  I think we emailed a bit many years back :) I like the idea behind mathfood, and thought it would make a really cool tool, like a smoothie-builder that figured out the right portions for your macro targets to round out your day's targets. Never got around to adding it as our main focus for a while has been to tone down the app's complexity, but maybe someday.
  - jwally 7y ago
    We did. Kudos on your success!

mmmBacon 7y ago

I like this idea but it’s a bit worrying to me that this company doesn’t seem to have a nutritionist on staff. Seems to me that’s a key missing element Of an otherwise great idea.

g00gler 7y ago

My only complaint is if I pick “2 meals” it shows breakfast and lunch rather than lunch and dinner and I can’t get it to flip. Anyone know how to fix that? Edit: even if I pick 3 meals, it comes up with a snack. I just want breakfast and dinner, is that bad?

el_cujo 7y ago
Had the same thought. I find it very easy to skip breakfast and still not feel the need to go overboard at lunch but I have a hard time falling asleep if I didn't eat a filling dinner. Lunch + dinner only lifestyle fits me much better than breakfast + lunch only, I know a lot of people who try to fast from 8 PM to noon who do the same.

k__ 7y ago

Raw carrots and plain greek yogurt. Does this thing even try?

Wh1zz 7y ago
Actually sounds like a pretty cool snack - I'll try that first thing next, thanks!
- k__ 7y ago
  It wasn't even suggested as one meal. Carrots were lunch and yogurt was part of the breakfast. So by commenting some random stuff I made better choices than this app, haha
  - papa_bear 7y ago
    Thanks for the feedback! If you want more interesting recipes to choose from, try bumping up the meal complexity. We set most meals to "simple" by default because most people, when they feed themselves, aren't cooking every single meal of the day, and it's easier to stick to a meal plan and not get lazy when things are simpler. That said, one of the main goals of the tool is to handle figuring out portioning for you. If you find you don't like any of our recipes, you can enter your own recipes and the generator will incorporate it into the plans. Also, I'll probably bump up the default meal complexity right now since that seems to be a source of a lot of feedback in this thread.

yohannparis 7y ago

Where is the pricing page? I do not want to sign up for a service that I cannot afford later on, or that looks like a scam.

drakonka 7y ago

It seems at first glance that there is no way to pick that you are both a vegetarian and want to follow a ketogenic diet. They are not mutually exclusive in real life, but in the diet-preference-picker on the website this seems to be the case.

papa_bear 7y ago
Once you create a basic account you can customize the food preferences however you like. The preset diet options simply pre-select some food exclusions for you, but you can select "anything" and create your own set of exclusions from scratch. As a forewarning, keto + vegetarian or vegan is one of the tougher things for our algorithms to do well. Maybe we're missing some critical recipes that keto vegetarians use, but it eliminates something like 90% of our available recipes.

jonahrd 7y ago

Haha it keeps suggesting I eat 4 hard boiled eggs in the morning.... I'll pass

turrini 7y ago

Would be nice to suggest water intake too

HJain13 7y ago

There should be an option to skip egg for vegetarian people...

dawnerd 7y ago
There should be all sorts of options. I don’t eat fish so that basically puts me in the vegetarian or vegan categories even though I’m neither.
- monadgonad 7y ago
  You can exclude just about any common specific ingredient, including eggs, fish and even specific kinds of fish.

Valk3_ 7y ago

I don't see the technical aspects of this project being discussed as much. Could you the author share some of the technical difficulties with a project like this? For instance, what were the hardest part to make this work? What are some improvements that you are planning on doing? Since it seems that the planner still has room for improvements as can be seen in the discussions here.

DBYCZ 7y ago

This is awesome, but doesn't seem to work for people looking to gain healthy weight. 5,000 calories/day is hard enough without needing to eat 3 bowls of corn flakes and 9 cups of greek yogurt for breakfast.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y ago
As a food addict I don't think this kind of statement will ever make sense to me. I have to work ridiculously hard at not consuming 5k Calories or more a day. When I weighed twice as much as I do now, 5k/meal wasn't unheard of. That anyone can describe eating as hard baffles me.

leshow 7y ago

I doesn't allow you to select macronutrient breakdown. Selecting calories is all well and good, but I would like to also select the macro ratios

mr_gibbins 7y ago

Good idea but poor execution. Asking for 1,500kcal over two meals, I was presented with tomato & onion on toast and an apple for breakfast, and tuna salad & avocado plus a bowl of carrots for lunch. Ideally I would have been able to choose lunch + dinner, and something a bit more exciting - plus, I don't really like tuna!

papa_bear 7y ago
If you click the 3-dot menu next to a meal's name you can edit that meal's settings, including changing things from Breakfast to Lunch. You'll probably also want to bump up the Complexity setting from Simple to Moderate to get some more interesting things.

cowpewter 7y ago

I love this idea, but I think it needs a little work... maybe something that helps it avoid combining foods that are too similar into the same meal? For breakfast, it keeps suggesting I eat a "high protein omelet" and 4 hard boiled eggs. That's a lot of egg in one meal. I don't want an omelet AND boiled eggs at the same time.

casion 7y ago

Food Allergies. Please support food allergies. If it is supported, it is difficult to tell, and thusly I can't use the service.

wilkystyle 7y ago
The "I don't want to eat" screen under "Food Preferences" allows a pretty wide variety of exclusions.

cdoan 7y ago

Christmas dinner with low fat

eithed 7y ago

Today I'll be eating 6 portions of carrots, radishes for dinner

MuffinFlavored 7y ago

I want to be able to do 1 meal a day, but dinner instead of auto assuming breakfast.

tarsinge 7y ago

Very interesting to get ideas (as someone already used to counting macros). The default macro ratio seems a bit high in protein, personally I would recommend lowering a bit the carbs and upping the fat. Also from my experience (lost 25kgs 15 years ago, fit) aiming to lower carbs in western diet usually has the side effect to forcing lower calories, not because you eat less carbs per se, but because a lot of food that can be abused and/or that are junk are carb based. I you aim for low carb and high fat/protein you automatically are looking at the better nutritional option if you eat out. And things like pasta or pizza are way too easy to refill for me, but with a plate of a protein and side vegetables I feel satiated after one serving. I think keto is too extreme if you are not a nutrition geek, but just aiming at reducing carbs should get you a long way in losing weight and eating more healthy without overthinking it.

top_kekeroni_m8 7y ago

I tried the vegan meal planner but was a bit disappointed. I love the UI, good job. The value of the planner - not so much. It pretty much kept recommending meals like sandwiches and tofu smoothies and tofu stir-fries or stuff like hummus without any bread lol. Would be awesome if you had a wfpb (whole-food plant-based) options as I feel like that is the healthiest possible diet one can follow (no animal products, no oil, low fat, no highly processed foods). It would probably be a bit harder than the usual american diets, but oh well. I wish you all the luck with your product!

damiananders 7y ago

Do you know how many parts of an insect are in each jar? According to Scientific American, each of us eats about 0.5-1kg of flies, maggots and other bugs a year, hidden in the chocolate we eat, the grains we consume, the peanut butter we spread on toast. According to US regulations (which are easier to access than Australian data), 125g of pasta (a single portion) may contain an average of 125 insect fragments or more, and a cup of raisins can have a maximum of 33 fruit fly eggs. A kilogram of flour probably has 15g of animal product in it, from rodent excreta to weevils to cockroach legs.