How to Learn About Nutrition

We made a mistake, and we think it's time to fix it.

We've noticed that some people want to use Nutriely like a regular calorie tracker: scan a barcode, log the food, and move on as quickly as possible. That makes sense. Most nutrition apps promise exactly that: a huge list of products behind a barcode scanner, and the fastest logging possible. Our mistake was positioning Nutriely as just another one of those "nutrition trackers".

Maybe Nutriely doesn't belong in that category.

Technically, yes, Nutriely is a tool where you can track nutrients. But we see it more as a tool for building understanding and confidence.

Imagine two people. Person A gets a meal plan for the week and has to follow it to eat a balanced diet. Person B knows how to build balanced meals from whatever they have at home. Which one would you rather be?

We want you to understand the ingredients that make up the foods you eat. We want you to learn which nutrients those foods give you. And most importantly, we want you to slowly build the knowledge and confidence to put together balanced meals on your own.

What does a balanced meal actually mean?

Many people assume that adding enough vegetables, grains and a source of protein to the plate is enough. That's a great starting point. But it's entirely possible to hit your calorie and macro goals and still fall short on important nutrients like calcium, vitamin A, iron and many others.

A balanced diet is one that gives your body everything it needs over the long term. Not just energy, but all the vitamins, minerals, fats and amino acids that come with it. We wrote more about this in When You Want to Track Everything but Calories.

So how do you learn to build balanced meals?

Not to brag, but Nutriely is an app that can help you do exactly that.

Our main goal is for you to learn something about your diet every time you log. That means you don't need to be 100% accurate. Weighing your food gives you the most accurate data, of course. But even if you just estimate the amounts and log them, patterns will start to show up. Which nutrients you get plenty of without trying. Which ones you keep missing. Which foods do most of the work.

When you spot a gap, you can look up any nutrient in our nutrient catalog to see what it does and which foods are rich in it. Then next time, you'll know what to reach for.

How to use Nutriely

Our database is built around whole foods. Scanning barcodes is not the main point of the app. Here's how we'd suggest thinking about it:

• If the product is a single food, like minced meat, boiled potatoes or plain yogurt, you don't need to create a new product. Just search for it in our food catalog and log it.
• If the product has many ingredients, use our analysis tools. Take a photo of the label, or paste the ingredient list into the Recipe Engineer, and Nutriely will estimate the full nutrition of the product, including the vitamins and minerals the label doesn't show.

Because of this, logging in Nutriely will probably take a little longer than in other nutrition apps. But that extra time comes with a much better understanding of what's actually in your food.

The goal is to not need us forever

Over time, we hope this new knowledge becomes second nature. Instead of relying on an app for the rest of your life, you'll instinctively build meals that give you the nutrients you need, and you'll recognise the foods you may want to limit. (If you're wondering how long that takes, we wrote about it in How Long Should You Track Nutrition For?)

So that's how we'd like you to think about Nutriely. Not just another tracker, but a tool for learning, understanding, and improving the way you fuel your body.