Logging food with your AI

Log with a photo or description

In Log food, Log with a photo or description opens your AI assistant — Claude or ChatGPT — with a sentence ready that names Mealuna and the meal you are logging, such as Today, 13:00 · Lunch. Add a photo of your plate or describe what you ate — “two eggs, toast and a coffee” is enough — and send it.

Your assistant recognises the foods, estimates the amounts and answers with a link. Tap it, then Open in Mealuna: Log food opens with the meal filled in. Check it, change anything that looks wrong, and press Log.

The photo stays with your assistant: Mealuna never sees it and only receives the list of foods, inside the link. The button sits below the search while no food is picked yet.

The first time

The first time you tap it, How it works shows the three steps there and back, and Got it, open Claude opens your assistant. The ⓘ beside the button shows the steps again.

If your assistant does not find Mealuna, refresh the connector's tool list — see Using Mealuna with an AI assistant.

If no AI is connected yet

With no assistant connected, the button opens a page that shows what it does and how to connect one. Choose your AI. Claude is the simplest, because Mealuna is in Claude's connector directory: Connect in Claude opens it there, you continue with Apple or Google — the same account you use in Mealuna — and come back, and Mealuna checks the connection. ChatGPT is connected on chatgpt.com in developer mode, on a computer.

Other AIs do not support Mealuna this way yet. Connecting in general, and what an assistant may change, is described in Using Mealuna with an AI assistant.

Which AI opens

Under the button, Opens Claude. Change says which assistant it opens. With one assistant connected, it opens that one; with several, the one you used last. To choose yourself, tap Change, or go to Settings → AI assistants → Open when logging: Automatic, Claude or ChatGPT.

Can't find it? Ask AI

When the search finds nothing for what you typed, an Ask AI button appears above the keyboard. It opens your assistant with your text already in the sentence, so a dish you named is worked out for you. With text typed, the button below the search takes it along in the same way.

From any conversation

Tell the assistant what you ate and it works out the protein, carbs and fat, then hands you a link. Tapping it opens Mealuna with the entry already filled in.

You check the numbers, change anything that looks wrong, and press Log. Nothing is saved until you do — the assistant cannot write to your diary, and neither can the link.

The meal is also kept in your own foods under the name the assistant gave it — a short dish name, as on a menu — so next time you find it in Mealuna's search without the assistant. Logging a meal with the same name again updates the one you kept. Because it is one of your own foods, logging it never changes the pantry.

When the assistant also names the main ingredients, Mealuna adds vitamins and minerals for them from its own data. It does so only when those ingredients make up most of the meal's energy, and the assistant never sends vitamin figures of its own.

Logging one of your recipes

If what you ate is one of your Mealuna recipes, the assistant finds it and hands you a link to the recipe itself. It opens with the recipe's Mark as eaten card and the portions already set.

Mealuna works out the nutrition from the recipe, so nothing is estimated — you check the portions and press Log as eaten.

The card also asks Where did the food come from? — Made now, Made earlier or Elsewhere. If Mealuna knows the dish was cooked in the four days before the time you ate it, Made earlier is already chosen; otherwise Log as eaten waits for your answer, so the pantry is never lowered twice for the same dish.

Saying when you ate

Tell the assistant when you ate — “at 9”, “for breakfast”, “yesterday evening” — and the link opens Mealuna at that time. A meal you name without a clock time goes in at Mealuna's usual time for that meal.

The When row shows the day and time before anything is saved, and you can change them there. It works the same for a meal and for one of your recipes: the recipe's Mark as eaten card has the same When row.

Say nothing about the time and the entry opens at the current moment. The diary goes back up to a week and never logs the future.

Good to know

Logging is part of Mealuna Premium: on a free plan the app shows its upgrade screen instead of the entry.

• Open the link on the phone that has Mealuna installed — on a computer there is nothing for it to open
• The numbers travel inside the link itself and never reach a server
• Calories are not carried — Mealuna works them out from the macros, so the two cannot disagree
• An older version of the app ignores recipe links — update Mealuna if one does nothing
• An older version of the app opens every entry at the current time — update Mealuna if the time you gave is not set. If the assistant says it cannot set a time, refresh the connector's tool list (see Using Mealuna with an AI assistant)
• This part works from any conversation, with or without a connector
• Log with a photo or description needs an assistant connected to Mealuna; a link from any conversation does not
• Log with a photo or description comes with the newest version of Mealuna — update the app if you do not see it