The method behind the menu

Try Food Plan turns a short list of foods and a daily budget into a menu in exact grams, and it aims for protein, carbs and fat that each land within 5 g of the numbers you typed. This page is the plain account of what that promise means and where the food numbers come from.

What the menu promises

The promise has one test. Protein, carbs and fat each land within 5 g of the number you asked for. When all three do, the stamp on the menu reads on target. When one does not, the stamp reads not yet and the menu tells you which one.

Calories are not a fourth test. They follow from the three macros, because food energy is built from them. The long standing convention, described in the FAO report on food energy, gives 4 kcal per gram of protein, 4 kcal per gram of carbohydrate and 9 kcal per gram of fat. A budget of 140 g protein, 190 g carbs and 50 g fat therefore adds up to 1770 calories (560 plus 760 plus 450). The menu itself adds up each food's own calorie value, so the total can sit a few dozen calories either side of the budget while the macros still land.

Where the food numbers come from

Every food comes from USDA FoodData Central, the public nutrient database run by the US Department of Agriculture. The foods on the menu use values per 100 g from the SR Legacy data type, which the FoodData Central documentation describes as historic data on food components, with nutrients derived from analyses, calculations and published literature. SR Legacy had its final release in April 2018, so the values are stable and open to check. Anyone can look up a food and read the same figures we use.

We do not make up numbers, round them to look tidier or swap in a brand label for a database value. If a food is not in the table, it is not on the menu.

Weigh the food the way the row says

A food has different numbers raw and cooked, so the menu names the state next to the food. Meat is weighed raw. Rice and oats are weighed dry unless the row says cooked. Water does most of the work here: cooked rice weighs far more than the dry rice it started as, so a gram of cooked rice carries far fewer calories than a gram of dry rice. The USDA retention factor tables are built on this idea, comparing the weight of a food before and after cooking so that nutrient values can be carried from one state to the other.

If you weigh your food after cooking, pick the cooked row for that food. If you pick a dry row and then weigh the cooked pot, the menu will be off by a wide margin, and no amount of careful planning on our side can fix it.

Vegetables and fruit

Vegetables and fruit get a standard portion rather than a weight tuned to the gram. They add a little of everything and they are easy to eat in a rough amount. The portion is counted in the totals, so the tally is honest about it. If you want a specific weight of a fruit or vegetable, lock it, and the rest of the day will plan around that number.

Every food you list stays in

The menu does not quietly drop a food. If you listed it, it has a place at a meal. When a food does not fit, the menu does not hide it; the tally shows the effect, and the reason line says what is happening. A food that is hard to fit sits at a small portion rather than disappearing, so the day you see is the day you asked for.

When a day cannot land

Some orders cannot land. A list with no protein food cannot reach a high protein budget, however it is arranged, and a list with no fat food will fall short on fat. When that happens, the menu says four things in plain words:

• Which macro misses.
• By how much, in grams.
• Why, in one short reason line.
• One food that would help, ready to add with a tap.

You decide what to do with that. You can add the food, swap another, change the budget or accept the gap. The menu never hides a miss and never promises that a particular list will always fit.

Locking and swapping

Tap the grams on any line and type the weight you want. That food stays put and the rest of the day plans around it. Tap the lock again and the food is free to move. Swapping a food for a similar one, say tuna for chicken at lunch, changes the grams of the other foods a little, and the tally updates at once.

What the menu does not do

It does not choose your targets. It does not check them against any guideline, and it does not tell you what to eat, lose or gain. Those decisions belong to you and, where it applies, to a professional who knows you. The menu is a calculator with a kitchen's sense of order: give it foods and numbers and it gives back a day in grams.

Free, and where it leads

Try Food Plan is free, with no sign up. When you want a plan that follows you from day to day, logs what you actually eat and keeps your budget, the menu hands your numbers and your order over to OnMacros, where an account is free to create and planning and logging every day need a subscription.

Checking our work

Everything above can be checked. The food numbers are public. The calorie arithmetic is the standard one. The weighing advice follows from how water behaves in cooking. If you find a number on the menu that does not match the USDA table, that is a bug and we want to hear about it at hello@onmacros.com.