How we use AI
“AI designs your meal plan” can mean many things. Here’s what AI actually does in this service, and what it doesn’t.
AI doesn’t calculate calories or nutrients
This is the most important part. Your basal metabolic rate, calorie target and protein, carbohydrate and fat targets are all **calculated by code using fixed formulas**. AI doesn’t make up numbers.
| Item | How it’s calculated |
|---|---|
| Basal metabolic rate | Mifflin-St Jeor equation |
| Daily energy expenditure | Basal metabolic rate × activity factor (1.2 ~ 1.725) |
| Calorie target | Daily energy expenditure ± goal adjustment → safety floor applied |
| Protein | Body weight × goal factor (1.2 ~ 2.0 g/kg) |
| Fat | 20–30% of total calories |
| Carbohydrate | The remaining calories |
Why we don’t let AI do the math
Two reasons.
- Accuracy — language models can make mistakes with numbers. That’s not acceptable for values that directly affect your health
- Safety — AI might respond to “I want to lose weight fast” by suggesting dangerously low calories. Fixing the formulas and floors in code prevents that
What AI does now
At this stage, its role is to combine foods within the calculated constraints and write the notes that accompany your results. It reflects your allergies, cooking ability, lunch situation and budget to choose meals you can actually eat.
Even if we expand AI later
We plan to connect more sophisticated AI models in the future. Even then, this order stays the same:
- Code calculates your calorie and nutrient targets
- AI combines foods and writes explanations within those constraints
- Code checks the result again — calorie error, allergy violations, safety floors
- Results that fail the check are never shown to you
AI in our guides
We use AI in the process of writing our guides. But every number in the text has been checked against an authoritative source, and a person reviews each guide before it’s published. We never publish unsupported numbers produced by AI.
What AI doesn’t do
- It doesn’t diagnose diseases
- It doesn’t give advice on medication or treatment
- It doesn’t judge your personal health
- It doesn’t replace a medical professional’s judgment