
Eat This Much – Automatic Meal Planner - sogen
https://www.eatthismuch.com/
======
nkozyra
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.

~~~
balt_s
Counterpoint: peanut butter and honey sandwich is delicious, and a worthy
competitor to the king of childhood sandwiches, the venerable PB&J.

~~~
kube-system
Peanut butter and bacon sandwiches are even better

~~~
torgian
Peanut butter, bacon, and molasses is even better.

~~~
koolba
Bacon, bacon, and bacon without bread is my goto.

~~~
a7f1002b89bd4d
Uh, this doesn't sound very delicious. Have you considered adding bacon?

~~~
justsid
I feel like what it really misses is a slice or two of bacon, to make it nice
and rounded.

------
maury91
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-
fioc...](https://www.myfitnesspal.com/it/food/calories/naturella-fiocchi-di-
latte-light-472127919)

Best cottage cheese I can find in UK: 11% Carbs, 26% Fats, 63% Proteins
[https://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/light-cottage-
che...](https://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/light-cottage-
cheese-200g-502275010)

Best "cottage cheese" I can find in Lithuania: 11% Carbs, 0% Fatas, 89%
Proteins [https://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/liesa-
varske-0-5-...](https://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/calories/liesa-
varske-0-5-62189974)

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

~~~
froh42
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.

~~~
astura
I've never heard of peanut butter and honey, must be a regional thing.

~~~
mumblemumble
I'm pretty sure it's a Great Plains thing. I grew up on it, but most everyone
I know has never heard of it.

I will say that it's only delicious if you use typical American heavily salted
peanut butter. Canadians should not try this with anything but Kraft unless
they are feeling dangerously happy and are in need of a quick day-ruiner.

~~~
pacerwpg
It's perfectly fine with natural peanut butter too - you can always add salt
onto the peanut butter.

------
mellowdream
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.

~~~
allovernow
>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
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
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.

~~~
scythe
I've dealt with insomnia for most of my life (I regularly saw the clock pass
midnight when I was 8, just laying in bed) and making sure I ate breakfast
_early_ every morning has seemed to be one of the most effective ways to fight
it.

After experimenting with various options, breakfast settled on a few handfuls
of hazelnuts and coffee with sugar. It turns out to be impossible to overeat
hazelnuts because they're chewy and filling^1, it requires literally no
preparation, and it keeps me full for a while. I find unsalted nuts go better
with coffee; salt clashes somehow.

~~~
PeterStuer
I regularly see people snacking 1 bag of nuts (250g, 1700 kcal) or even 2 bags
a day mindlessly in front of their computer at work.

~~~
scythe
I think _snacking_ is the key concept here. I just eat quickly until I'm full
and put the bag away. Lots of things are unhealthy when you just eat them out
of boredom.

Imagine sitting next to a huge amount of any _other_ kind of food all day!

~~~
PeterStuer
I fully agree.

OTOH These people have had it drilled into them that:

\- Calories are a lie. The model is incorrect (true) and should therefore be
completely ignored/rejected (false)

\- Fats are good. Nuts are healthy.

\- 'Grazing' food all day is good.

~~~
scythe
>Nuts are healthy.

There is a great deal of scientific evidence supporting nut consumption. This
is not just because they contain fat, but because the fat they contain is
monounsaturated, they are slow to digest, and they are good sources of fiber
(particularly almond/hazelnut/pecan):

[https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/3/647S/4690007](https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/78/3/647S/4690007)

[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/articl...](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-
abstract/415912)

[https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1741-...](https://bmcmedicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1741-7015-11-164)

> ‘Grazing’ food all day is good.

I don’t think I’ve encountered this philosophy much in the wild. I would never
endorse it.

I do understand the practical necessity of snacking sometimes when you’re
trying to get work done on a schedule. In these cases I think it helps to
drink plenty of water with any snacks.

~~~
blangblang
It's the fallacy found first in the list the causes the issue:

>\- Calories are a lie. The model is incorrect (true) and should therefore be
completely ignored/rejected (false)

>\- Fats are good. Nuts are healthy.

>\- 'Grazing' food all day is good.

Good fats are good for you and nuts are a source of such fats. For some,
eating more frequent, smaller portions makes it easier to hit a reasonable
caloric intake for the day. However, add in that calories are a lie and ignore
the fact that nuts are calorie dense, and you get people eating 3000 kcal of
nuts in a day by grazing on healthy foods.

In another thread, the mention of weighing foods for a while seems to counter
this. It's just not that intuitive that a small bag of nuts can have enough
calories for a meal (at least is wasn't always to me). As a child of the
midwest, it took some time to deprogram my concept of healthy portions, so I
can admit to falling into some version of this trap for many year, and still
do on occasion.

------
papa_bear
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.

~~~
appleiigs
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
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.

------
Pfhreak
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?

~~~
papa_bear
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.

~~~
La1n
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?

------
mastazi
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
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.

------
alkank
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
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
>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-
gui...](https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/sugar-
guideline/en/)

------
TheRealPomax
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
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
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.

------
orky56
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!

------
sushisource
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
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.

------
dang
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)

------
inertiatic
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.

------
g00gler
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
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.

------
chronicler
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
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.

------
damiananders
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.

------
flurie
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.

------
yohannparis
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.

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

~~~
iamwil
Haha. You have control over the menu?

~~~
ericd
You’re right, definitely don’t :-)

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

~~~
Normal_gaussian
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.

------
projektfu
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
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
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
Unfortunately I can’t see how this functionality works without entering credit
card info

------
BadassFractal
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
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.

------
tarsinge
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.

------
mr_gibbins
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
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
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.

------
braindongle
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.

------
adamiscool8
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
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

------
edoo
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
> 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
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.

------
foolinaround
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
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 :)

------
top_kekeroni_m8
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!

------
saagarjha
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.

------
intruder
I love the loading text

Combobulate calories... Chopping onions... Crying because of onions...

------
Semaphor
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-p...](https://help.eatthismuch.com/help/how-does-the-family-meal-
planning-work)

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

~~~
dawnerd
Why’d you jump right to “Americans”? There’s plenty of other countries with as
many meals as us.

~~~
ggregoire
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).

------
victorbojica
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 ?

------
ufo
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
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.

------
JMTQp8lwXL
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.

------
tpolm
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
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.

------
Valk3_
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.

------
cortesoft
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.

------
maxander
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!

------
casion
Food Allergies. Please support food allergies.

If it is supported, it is difficult to tell, and thusly I can't use the
service.

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

------
reinkaos
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
They do let you choose a goal? Lose weight, maintain, build muscle.

------
crooked-v
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
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&pa...](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)

------
elil17
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)

------
jwally
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
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
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
We did. Kudos on your success!

------
tallbikeguy
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...

------
drakonka
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
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.

------
jackthetab
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.

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

------
rmason
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
What would you expect a tool like this to suggest for people who don't cook?

~~~
krageon
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.

------
NumberCruncher
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".

------
DBYCZ
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
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.

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

------
dandanio
Drop the login: [https://www.nngroup.com/articles/login-
walls/](https://www.nngroup.com/articles/login-walls/)

~~~
_august
Don't they? Or are you saying this site is a good example of doing that?

~~~
dandanio
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.

------
lpghatguy
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
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
Definitely after a few regenerates. I was looking for degenerate cases. :)

------
TACIXAT
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.

------
mmmBacon
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.

------
taurath
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.

------
arcboii92
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
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
Keto is a fixed 25g

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

------
leshow
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

------
SlowRobotAhead
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.

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

------
k__
Raw carrots and plain greek yogurt.

Does this thing even try?

~~~
Wh1zz
Actually sounds like a pretty cool snack - I'll try that first thing next,
thanks!

~~~
k__
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
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.

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

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

------
dalore
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.

~~~
aldanor
The stone age man wasn't spending half a day sitting staring at a screen
either and was probably more physically active overall...

~~~
robohoe
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
_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
Early man lived in places without winter

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Equatorial regions still have seasons, wet-dry : I should perhaps have said
non-growing season.

I mean early as in > c.8 kya.

Wikipedia suggests Scandinavia had hunter-fisher-gatherers about 11kya, I'm
guessing they did preserving at least!?

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

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

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

------
HJain13
There should be an option to skip egg for vegetarian people...

~~~
dawnerd
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
You can exclude just about any common specific ingredient, including eggs,
fish and even specific kinds of fish.

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

------
turrini
Would be nice to suggest water intake too

------
officehero
SOYLENT, SOYLENT, SOYLENT, SOYLENT ...

------
logicallee
This is amazing.

------
cdoan
Christmas dinner with low fat

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

~~~
papa_bear
Interesting, will check it out. Thanks!

