Configuring Recipes

What is a recipe? The definition of a food or drink – with ingredients and quantities – so the app can calculate nutritional values.

When Is a Detailed Recipe Worth It?

Pareto principle: Put the effort into the 20% of meals that make up 80% of your diet. The rest can be logged as placeholders.

The 3 Recipe Types

Full Recipe

All ingredients with quantities defined → nutritional analysis possible.

Placeholder

Only a name, no ingredients → logging possible, but no nutritional analysis.

Variant Recipe

A group of interchangeable ingredients – you choose the current variant when logging. Example: Coffee with milk → milk can be whole milk, oat milk or none.

Creating a New Recipe

Entry Point: Search

Recipes are accessible via two routes – with a slightly different view:

Settings → Recipes (management)

The recipe list has its own search field directly above the filter chips. Start typing and the filter chips update immediately with the match counts per category. The X button on the right clears the search text; the keyboard closes automatically when scrolling.

Tap a Meal tile (directly while logging)

When the search field is still empty, the app shows a prominent entry: fork icon, a short hint text and a large barcode button. As soon as you start typing, the view switches to the normal search results list with filter chips.

💡 The large barcode button in the empty state makes it particularly easy to start a scan directly – without having to search first.

Entering a name searches three sources simultaneously – visible via the counters in the filter chips:

💡 The number in the chip shows how many results exist in that category. No result = chip grayed out.

Choose Creation Method

If no matching result is available, the app offers two direct actions (visible directly below the search field):

Recipe Editor

After creating, the editor opens:

• Name – freely editable
• Type – Food or Drink (affects units and analysis)
• Variant recipe – toggle on if the recipe should have options
• Servings per recipe – how many servings does the total quantity yield?
• Serving size – what is one serving?

Adding Ingredients

Step 1: Search

Enter the ingredient name in the editor’s search field. The filter chips show results per source again:

⏳ OFF search is limited to once every 10 seconds (Open Food Facts guideline). A brief wait is normal.

Step 2: Enter Quantity

After tapping an ingredient you enter quantity and unit:

Switch units with the stepper on the right (g, ml, pieces, …). Then “Add”.

💡 Recipes can be nested to any depth: a recipe “Pasta Bolognese” can contain the recipe “Tomato sauce” as an ingredient.

Variants – Flexible Ingredients

Variants let you choose between multiple ingredients when logging – with the calorie impact shown per option.

Creating an Option Group

While adding an ingredient a button “Add as option…” appears at the bottom. Tap it instead of “Add”:

The group creation dialog opens:

• Option group – name of the variant group (e.g. “Milk types”)
• First option – automatically pre-filled with the ingredient name
• Selection: One / Multiple – can one or multiple options be chosen at once?
• Selection required – must at least one option be chosen?

Example: Coffee with milk
  Group "Milk types": UHT whole milk | Barista oat drink
  Selection required: NO → coffee also loggable without milk
  Multiple selection: NO → always only one milk type

Adding More Options

Find more ingredients via search and tap “Add as option…” again:

The app then shows all existing groups – select the right one:

When Logging: Selecting a Variant

When logging a meal the full logging view appears:

Quick picker (top): Select common quantities with a tap (e.g. 200ml, 250ml, 330ml, 500ml). The slider below allows fine intermediate values.

Customize recipe (bottom): All variant groups of the recipe appear here with the available options. Next to each option is the calorie impact (e.g. +32 kcal for whole milk, +25 kcal for oat milk). Tap an option to select it.

The pre-selection is remembered for the next logging – you only need to change it when you’re having something different.

Recipe with Many Ingredients: Pasta Example

Recipes with multiple ingredients look like this in the editor:

Each ingredient shows calories per 100g as reference. The serving size determines how much counts as “one serving”.

BLS Linking for OFF Products

OFF products (scanned products) often only contain macronutrients (energy, protein, fat, carbohydrates). For a complete micronutrient analysis (vitamins, minerals, amino acids) the app links each product ingredient to a BLS entry.

This happens partly automatically – you can see the progress in the product detail view:

Color coding of links:

The percentage shows the similarity between product ingredient and BLS entry.

Correcting a Link Manually

Tap an ingredient → the app shows suggestions with similarity scores:

You can switch between Auto-linking (AI suggestions sorted by similarity) and BLS search (free text search). Tap the desired entry to apply it.

💡 Links are optional, but they significantly improve the quality of the analysis.

→ More on the difference between BLS and OFF: Data sources

Nutrition Report

If you log meals regularly, you can open the Nutrition Report under Reports. It shows average daily intake for a selectable time period – with a quality rating showing how reliable the data basis is.

Data quality: The app rates how complete your entries are and whether nutritional values come from precise (BLS/OFF linked) or estimated (placeholder) sources.

Completing a Placeholder Later

1. Settings → Recipes
2. Find the placeholder in the list
3. Tap → add ingredients → “Done”

All previous events with this placeholder are automatically linked to the new nutritional data.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I create a recipe directly while logging? Yes. When tapping a meal tile on the dashboard you can enter a new name and create it immediately as a placeholder or full recipe – without going to Settings first.

Can recipes be exported or shared? Yes. In the recipe list (Settings → Recipes) there is an Import/Export symbol at the top right. Use it to export individual or all recipes as a .ioom file. An optional toggle “Include photos” (active by default) embeds associated nutrition photos as Base64 in the file, so they’re immediately available when importing on another device. The exported file can be shared via AirDrop, Mail or iCloud.

What’s the difference between BLS and OFF? BLS is a scientific nutrient database for basic foods (raw ingredients). OFF is a crowdsourced database for packaged products (barcode scan). → Data sources explained