The Complete Guide to MealThinker

When you first sign up, you can choose dietary preferences, allergies, and goals. MealThinker can use saved settings as planning context, but generated recipes are not an allergy-safety guarantee and still need your review.

In Preferences, set your cooking skill level, time per meal, budget, and household size. This tells MealThinker whether to suggest quick 15-minute meals or elaborate weekend projects.

Choose cuisines you enjoy, such as Italian, Mexican, Thai, or Indian. MealThinker can use those preferences when a request allows room for variety.

Enter age, weight, height, and activity level to receive estimated daily calorie and macro targets, or enter custom targets. These estimates are general planning aids, not medical advice.

Hate cilantro or mushrooms? Add them to your disliked-foods list so they can be included as planning constraints. Review each suggestion because generated output can still be wrong.

Choose one of the three current starting points, or type your own request:

• Help me choose one meal - Opens the guided meal picker
• Plan my day - Starts a day-plan request with serving options
• Plan my week - Starts a seven-day request with serving and meal-type options

Before sending a quick action, you can request 1-20 servings and choose whether to make extra for leftovers. Check the authored yield and ingredient amounts on the completed recipe before cooking.

You're not limited to quick actions. Type anything in plain language:

Recent messages in the current chat can support follow-up requests. If the context resets or a detail matters, state it again:

• 'Actually, make that vegan' - switches the suggestion
• 'Can you add more protein?' - adjusts the recipe
• 'What about something with my air fryer?' - factors in equipment
• 'Give me the full recipe for option 2' - expands a suggestion into a complete recipe

There are three ways to add items:

• In Pantry, type an ingredient in 'Add an item...' and choose Add. MealThinker assigns a category, and you can choose an optional use-soon reminder.
• In Chat, ask MealThinker to add named items such as tomatoes, tofu, rice, and broccoli, then review the saved list.
• Use '+ Add many at once' to paste or type a list, review the parsed items, and confirm the entries you want to save.

Pantry dates are optional reminders you choose. MealThinker does not invent shelf-life dates, and reminder status is not a food-safety verdict:

• No reminder - the item remains available without a date assumption
• Upcoming reminder - highlighted as the date approaches
• Past reminder - separated from active pantry items for your review

Do not use a pantry reminder to decide whether food is safe. Follow official storage guidance and discard food when safety is uncertain.

Mark an item as running low to keep a visible restock list and add those items to your shopping list when needed.

With pantry mode on, open-ended meal requests can prioritize the ingredient names saved to your pantry. Review the completed recipe because suggestions may still require other ingredients or corrections.

Use 'Help me choose one meal' to open the guided meal picker, choose a meal type, and add any constraints that matter.

Use 'Plan My Day' for breakfast, lunch, and dinner options. When nutrition tracking is on, MealThinker sizes suggestions toward your saved daily targets; nutrition remains an estimate and exact target fit is not guaranteed.

Ask for a week plan to generate seven days of meal options. You can request variety or other constraints and should review every day before relying on the plan.

Saved weekly plans use a 'Week of' name based on the first meal date. Browse them anytime in the Meal Plans tab.

Review each meal option and completed recipe in Chat before saving a plan. If a slot is not right, revise the request before you keep it.

Generate a shopping list from a saved plan. The workflow checks saved pantry names and can omit matched ingredients; review the list before shopping.

Completed generated recipes are saved with ingredients, instructions, estimated nutrition, timing, and serving count. Check all details before cooking.

After cooking a recipe, rate it. Ratings and favorites can be included as preference signals in later suggestions, but they do not guarantee a particular result.

Mark recipes as 'Favorite' for quick access to your best ones. Use 'Want to Make' as a cooking bucket list - queue up recipes you're excited to try.

Add a note to a saved recipe, such as 'Add extra garlic next time.' The note stays with that recipe until you edit or delete it.

Tap 'Log as Eaten' on a saved recipe to add its estimated nutrition to your meal log. Review the serving and values before treating the log as accurate.

Search by recipe name or ingredient and filter by meal type, favorites, want-to-make, star rating, pantry matches, or recipes using items with reminders due soon.

Items are grouped into grocery categories such as Produce, Grains, Frozen, and Canned Goods. Correct any categorization that does not fit your store.

Generate a list from a saved plan. MealThinker checks saved pantry names and can omit matched ingredients, so confirm the final list before shopping.

Smart Suggestions can propose optional staples from saved profile settings and current pantry names. The screen highlights one 'Biggest unlock' and lists other picks as 'Also worth adding' for your review.

Tap items to mark them as purchased. Use the list on your phone while walking through the store.

Log a saved recipe with its estimated values or describe another meal for an estimate. Check serving size and ingredients because a meal description may be incomplete.

Progress bars compare logged calorie, protein, carb, and fat estimates with saved daily targets. Use them as planning context rather than a diagnosis or exact measurement.

The log can display estimated fiber, iron, calcium, sodium, vitamin C, and vitamin B12. General profile-based targets may not fit an individual's medical needs.

Navigate between dates to review what you logged and the estimates recorded for each day. Missing or incorrect logs will affect the comparison.

When nutrition tracking is on, logged meals can inform the remaining calorie and macro targets used for later meal requests that day. Suggestions and nutrition values still require review.

All available in the Preferences page:

• Dietary preferences: Vegan, Vegetarian, Keto, Paleo, Gluten-Free, Low Carb, High Protein, Whole30
• Allergies: Peanuts, Tree Nuts, Wheat, Soy, Sesame, and more
• Health goals: Build Muscle, Eat Healthier, More Energy, Save Money, Quick Meals, Meal Prep
• Favorite cuisines: American, Mexican, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Thai, Mediterranean, Korean, Middle Eastern
• Kitchen equipment: Instant Pot, Air Fryer, Slow Cooker, Blender, Food Processor, Grill, Stand Mixer, Wok, Cast Iron, Sous Vide
• Cooking skill level, time per meal (15-60+ minutes), budget level, household size, meals per day

You can explicitly ask Chat to save a free-text note after providing the required sensitive-data consent. Saved notes remain until you delete them and may be used as context; they are not guaranteed to control every suggestion.

Visit About Me to review saved profile fields, planning targets, a pantry summary, recipe statistics, taste signals, notes, and usage statistics.

Enter age, sex, weight, height, and activity level for estimated daily calories, macros, and selected micronutrient reference targets. Results are general planning estimates, not medical advice.

Estimate monthly grocery spending from USDA food-plan inputs and your household assumptions. Actual prices and spending will vary.

Browse curated dinner ideas by dietary preference, cuisine, and occasion, with recipe-level nutrition estimates to review.

Build a seven-dinner starter plan from MealThinker's current recipe collection, swap dinners, and print the plan and categorized shopping list. No signup, email, payment method, or live AI generation call.