How to use foodcalc

foodcalc calculates the nutritional values of recipes and keeps track of what you eat – without anyone else, not even the people who run the service, being able to read your diary.

1. Get started

Create an account. Enter your email address under Create account. You’ll get an email with a link where you choose a password (at least 10 characters).
Save your recovery key. When your account is created, you’ll see a key that looks something like ABCD-EFGH-…. It is only shown once. Save it in your password manager or write it down.
Start logging. On the Today start page, tap + Log meal, or go to Diary and tap + Add next to a meal.

Navigation. On a phone, the Today, Diary, Statistics, Recipes and More tabs are at the bottom. Under More you’ll find Catalogue, My products, Account and Help. On wider screens, the same choices are in the menu at the top.

iPhone app. In the foodcalc app for iPhone, log in with the same email address and password. The diary, collections, targets and recipes are the same as on the web and are encrypted on the phone in the same way. Help under More in the app opens this page.

Why a recovery key? Your diary is encrypted with your password, in your own browser. That’s why no one can recover it for you. If you forget your password, you can choose a new one via Forgot your password?, but to keep your diary you need the recovery key. Without it, the diary starts over from scratch – your recipes are kept.

2. The diary

The diary shows one day at a time, split into Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and Snack, with a total for the day at the bottom. Browse with ← Previous, Today and Next →.

Adding

Tap + Add next to a meal. The dialog has four tabs:

Food: Type what you ate, for example “quark”, pick it from the list and enter grams. The search shows your own things first: collections, your recipes, what you’ve logged recently – then the food database and the catalogue. Each result is labelled so you can see what it is.
Recipe: Search your recipes and the catalogue and enter the number of servings.
Quick entry: When you only know roughly: enter a name and kcal (protein, fat and carbs if you like).
Barcode: Scan a package with the camera or type in the digits. See Barcode.

You can change the meal in the dialog before adding.

View, edit and delete

Tap the name on a row to see all values: protein, fat, carbs and fibre.
Change on the row lets you change the amount or meal, or delete the row.

3. Collections – your usual meals

Do you eat the same breakfast every day? Save it as a collection and add everything with one tap.

Create: tick the rows in the diary (they can be in different meals) and tap Save as collection. Give it a name, for example “Quark with blueberries”.
Use: search for the name under Add → Food. The collection comes first. Choose a factor if you ate more or less than usual (1.5 = half as much again) and tap Add all. Each part becomes its own row that you can adjust for that day.
Change: under My products → My collections you can rename it, change amounts, remove parts or add new ones. What you’ve already logged is not affected.

In the iPhone app: search for it under Add, and change it under More → Collections.

4. Barcodes and your own products

On the Barcode tab, tap Scan and hold the barcode in front of the camera. If the camera doesn’t work, you can type in the digits.
The product is fetched from Open Food Facts, an open database built on contributions from users. Enter how many grams you ate.
If the product isn’t found, fill in the values per 100 g from the package. It is then saved as your own product and found straight away the next time you scan it.
You’ll find your own products under My products, where you can correct or delete them.

5. Meal photos (iPhone app)

In the iPhone app you can log a meal from a photo – handy for a lunch at a restaurant, where there is no recipe or barcode. Claude (an AI from Anthropic) lists the foods it sees, with estimated amounts. The nutritional values come from the same food databases as everything else, not from the AI.

Take or choose a photo. Tap Add next to a meal, then Photograph meal, and choose Take photo or Choose from library. Take it from above with the whole plate in view. If you like, add a short note, for example “pasta carbonara, half portion”.
Analyse. Tap Analyse photo. After a few seconds you get a list with one row per food, with its grams and kcal.
Check the list. The amounts are estimates, so check them and weigh when it matters. Change the grams and tap the checkmark above the keyboard, tap a row to choose another food, swipe a row to the left to delete it, or tap Add food. A row with no matching food asks you to pick one. The totals update as you go.
Hidden fat. Cooking fat, butter, dressing and sauces get their own rows marked assumed, because that is where photo estimates most often go wrong. Keep, change or remove them.
Log. Choose the meal and tap Add … foods to …. Each food becomes its own row in the diary, which you can change later like any other row. Nothing is logged before that tap.

The foods you swap in are remembered for your account, so the same dish matches better next time.
No food found? Choose another photo, or tap Search instead to log the usual way.
There is a daily limit on how many photos you can analyse. Photo analysis may not be switched on for every account: if you don’t see Photograph meal, it isn’t available for yours.
Before it is sent, the photo is made smaller and its location and other metadata are removed. It is analysed by Anthropic (Claude), never stored by foodcalc and not saved to your photo library.

Shortcuts

Hold the app icon on the Home Screen to go straight to Scan barcode or Photograph meal. Both are also in the Shortcuts app, and you can ask Siri, for example “Photograph meal in foodcalc”.

6. Recipes

From a web page

Paste the link to a recipe into the Analyse box at the top of Recipes. foodcalc reads the ingredients, converts measures such as dl and tbsp to grams and matches each ingredient against the nutrition databases of the Swedish Food Agency (Livsmedelsverket) and the USDA. It takes a few seconds.

Your own recipe

Under New recipe, enter a title, the number of servings and the ingredients – one per line, for example “2 dl wheat flour”.

Correcting the result

Change the grams directly in the ingredient list, or tap Swap to pick a different food. The nutrition is recalculated straight away.
Your choices are remembered: the next time the same ingredient appears in a recipe, your choice is used.
Change the servings to get the value per serving.
Edit changes the recipe lines themselves and recalculates everything.

All your recipes are under My recipes.

7. The catalogue

Recipes analysed from web pages end up in a shared catalogue that all users can search. The catalogue never shows who added a recipe.

Add to my recipes saves the recipe to your list (that list is encrypted).
If you correct a catalogue recipe, you get your own copy – the catalogue doesn’t change for anyone else.
If you analyse a link that is already in the catalogue, you get the result straight away.

8. Statistics

Under Statistics, choose Day, Week, Month or Year and browse with the arrows. You’ll see totals, the average per logged day, the split between protein, fat and carbs, and charts over time. Each chart can also be shown as a table.

Targets

Tap Targets on the start page (or open Targets) and enter a daily target for kcal, protein and carbs. You can leave a field empty if you don’t want a target for it. On the start page, the rings show how much of today’s target you have eaten, and the week bars compare the week with your target and with last week. Without targets, only the totals for the day and the week are shown. Your targets are encrypted just like the diary.

Statistics are calculated in your browser from the decrypted diary – the server never sees it.

9. Your account

Under Account you can:

see which devices are logged in,
change your password (other devices are then logged out),
change your email address (you confirm via an email to the new address),
choose whether you want news emails (off by default),
download your account data,
delete your account, along with your recipes and your diary. This cannot be undone.

On a new device or in a new browser, just log in as usual and your diary is unlocked there too.

10. Privacy – who sees what?

Only you: Your diary, your collections, your own products, your saved catalogue recipes and all statistics. They are encrypted in your browser with a key that comes from your password. The server only stores unreadable data.
The server: Your email address (and whether you want news emails), when you last logged in, your own recipes, your ingredient corrections and the food swaps you make on meal photos – what is needed to calculate nutritional values.
All users: The catalogue: recipes from web pages, with no link to who added them.

Barcodes are looked up through our server, so Open Food Facts doesn’t see who you are. We don’t store who scanned what.

Meal photos are sent to Anthropic (Claude) for analysis and are not stored by foodcalc. Only the list of foods it finds comes back to you.

11. Frequently asked questions

It says “Log in again to unlock your diary”.: The browser no longer has the key, for example after you logged out or cleared site data. Log in again and everything is back.
I’ve forgotten my password.: Choose Forgot your password? on the login page. Enter your recovery key to keep your diary.
A nutritional value looks wrong.: Open the recipe and check the grams and the matched food on each row. Tap Swap if the wrong food was picked. A product from Open Food Facts can have wrong values – then enter it as your own product.
The amounts from a photo look wrong.: They are estimates from a photo and can be some way off. Weigh the food when it matters and change the grams before you log, and check the rows marked assumed – hidden fat is the most common error.
The camera won’t start.: Allow camera access for the site in your browser settings, or type in the barcode.
Where does the nutrition data come from?: The food databases of the Livsmedelsverket (Swedish Food Agency), Matvaretabellen, Mattilsynet (NLOD 2.0), © Food Data (frida.fooddata.dk), version 5.5, DTU Fødevareinstituttet (CC BY 4.0) and the USDA, plus Open Food Facts. When several sources have the same food, foodcalc combines them into one entry. The values are estimates – use them as a guide, not as medical advice.