Is AI meal planning safe?

Short answer: it depends, and most of the criticism is fair. This page is written by an AI nutrition app, so it is only honest to say up front that we are not a neutral party. Even so, conceding the main objections is more useful than defending against them, because most of them are correct - and knowing when these tools should not be used matters more than knowing when they can be.

Who should not use one

This list is not a formality. In the following situations a nutrition plan should come from a doctor or a dietitian, not from an app:

• Diabetes and insulin resistance. Carbohydrate counting and insulin dosing are linked; a generated plan does not know your medication and cannot account for hypoglycaemia risk.
• Hypertension and cardiovascular disease. Sodium restriction and drug interactions need clinical follow-up.
• Kidney and liver disease. Protein and electrolyte limits change with the stage of the condition; a general protein target can be harmful here.
• Pregnancy and breastfeeding. Energy and micronutrient needs change, and a plan targeting a calorie deficit is inappropriate in this period.
• A history of eating disorders. Number-focused tracking can itself be a trigger. That is a risk of the mechanism, not of any particular app's quality.
• Under 18. Growth is a separate specialism.

Three places the criticism is right

Two of these three come straight out of how the machine works; the mechanism itself is set out in how AI meal planning works.

1. Adherence really is low

An automatically generated plan does not know your cooking skill, your budget, your working hours or what the rest of your household eats. Without those, a plan can be technically correct and practically unusable - and a plan nobody follows achieves nothing. Cookrange does not solve this; what it does is make the plan regenerable, which lowers the cost of changing it when it does not fit. That is a reduction, not a solution.

2. Micronutrient blindness

Most tools that track calories and macros do not see the vitamin and mineral side.Cookrange does not either: four core macros are tracked and micronutrient tracking does not exist today. So you cannot answer "did I get enough iron" with this tool. On a long-running restrictive plan that gap is serious and calls for a dietitian.

3. A number looks like evidence

"2,410 kcal" on a screen does not mean that number was measured. All of these tools use prediction equations, and your real expenditure can sit ten per cent or more away from the estimate. The precision is an illusion. Because we know that, our calculator pages statethe equation they use and its limits explicitly.

So when does it help

For an adult with no diagnosed condition, a general goal like weight management or muscle gain, and a willingness to log their own intake, these tools do one job well: reducing decision load. Solving "what do I eat today" from scratch every day is tiring, and that fatigue is the most common reason plans get abandoned. Producing a starting plan, updating it against the record, and not deleting the history - that is where the mechanism genuinely contributes.

What an app ought to state in writing

A checklist you can use to assess the category. If an app does not say these things, there are things it is not saying:

• The name of the equation it uses and its limits (ours: Mifflin-St Jeor).
• Whether it tracks micronutrients (ours: it does not).
• Whether its allergen filter is a guarantee or a preference (ours: a preference filter, not a guarantee).
• Where the food data comes from (ours: Open Food Facts, community-contributed).
• That it is not a medical device and does not diagnose.
• Where the data is stored and who can see it.
• Who should not use it - a list like the one at the top of this page.

Cookrange's own limits, in one place

• Not a medical device or a health application; it does not diagnose or prescribe.
• No micronutrient (vitamin, mineral) tracking. Four core macros are tracked.
• No wearable and no Apple Health / Google Fit integration today.
• No browsable recipe library; recipes are generated on request and are not kitchen-tested.
• Currently pre-launch (v0.9.6 internal alpha); not in the App Store or Google Play.
• 2 AI generations a day on the free tier, 20 on Premium. Premium buys more generations, never access to your own data.