What would make Mealime better for you? 🚀

[KateGRD]

Hi there. I’ve attempted to read through what suggestions have already been given as to not repeat, however I’ve seen it come up over and over again. The two things that I would like to see you to make me a lime better are: 1. nutritional information and 2. A way to filter further than only choosing 1 eating preference…I’ll explain.

1. I am a dietitian, I practice in cardiac rehabilitation and have never found an application as easy as this, to use for myself even, to make healthy eating easy. I have recommended this app to countless other dietitians and patients that I see because I am so impressed with what you have made. Here’s where the problem lies. I only feel comfortable recommending this app to patients who have a moderate level of food and cooking knowledge because there are no calories, sodium, carbohydrates, or fat information for lower health educated individuals to assess that the recipe is OK for them to use.
   This is where my second point comes in. Even if you didn’t want to divulge all of the nutrition information you could provide filters that could disseminate between recipes that are higher or lower in sodium ( or other various nutrients, such as you do with “low carb”) as we give our patients actual number goals for nutrients.

With that said…I cannot rave enough about a free app that has saved me $, made my life easier and, shh, has lost 3# for me

Thanks,
Kate G

[jeff]

There’s nothing wrong with a 3# weight loss! Great job @KateGRD, I’m glad Mealime has been working well for you so far

I only feel comfortable recommending this app to patients who have a moderate level of food and cooking knowledge because there are no calories, sodium, carbohydrates, or fat information for lower health educated individuals to assess that the recipe is OK for them to use.

I appreciate your feedback, Kate. That makes sense. We do have full nutritional information available, but it’s currently only shown to Pro subscribers. It’s tough to strike a balance between making a simple app that most people can follow without making it too simple by withholding too many features or information. Nutritional info fell on the “too-much-info” side of the fence for us, but I can see how it is required for some people.

Have you found that some of your patients and colleagues upgrade to Pro in order to access nutritional information, or has it not come up?

you could provide filters that could disseminate between recipes that are higher or lower in sodium ( or other various nutrients, such as you do with “low carb”) as we give our patients actual number goals for nutrients.

This would be awesome! We are currently considering how to make filters / this type of granular meal planning available for a future release. I agree that it would be a big value add to the app. It’s a big’ish project, but I’m sure we’ll post updates in the community here to keep everyone informed of our progress

Thanks again for your feedback!

[mealimemileaem]

I thought a nice addition would be to provide a sustainable seafood meal plan option. In “settings” there would be a check mark that would look something like…

☐ Only include seafood recipes not on the “avoid” list of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch List

or

☐ Only include seafood recipes that are on the “Best Choices” or “Good Alternative” lists of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch List

[jeff]

I thought a nice addition would be to provide a sustainable seafood meal plan option

That’s a cool idea! Thanks for sharing.

[Cbabcock110]

Maybe there can be meal prep preference options: Make ahead/meal prep, slow cooker, etc.

[Cbabcock110]

I really wish we could add our favorites to meal plans without upgrading. At the risk of sounding cheap, that is the only feature missing for me in the free version and don’t think it’s worth paying the fee for the upgraded version just for that one feature.

Also, I wonder if there is a way to suggest what meals to swipe for instead of just being at the mercy of the app. For instance, if I have a recipe with asparagus and another recipe with chicken, maybe I want to look for a third recipe that used both of those ingredients to reduce waste and make shopping even easier.

But I do truly love the app! And we have LOVED all but one of the meals we’ve made so far!

And now - 5 minutes later, I see that many of these features are in the beta version! so excited to try it!!

[Okn0tok]

Please Fix it! It is hard to use when it’s chopping all the words off in menus and on buttons. 6.0 LG G4. I would pay for it if this is fixed, as it is I won’t. Uploading…

[jeff]

Thanks so much for your feedback re: favorites! It’s always good to know which Pro features are most compelling. I agree that Pro is probably not worth it if favorites is the only feature you’re looking for. We’re always thinking about how to improve both the free and Pro versions of the app, and we’ll certainly take your feedback into account

And now - 5 minutes later, I see that many of these features are in the beta version! so excited to try it!!

Awesome! Hope you like it!

[Squanchy]

Hello! I second the crock pot option. I’m currently paying for another service that has crock pot options but am not very happy with other features with that service and am looking to jump ship.

[jeff]

It is hard to use when it’s chopping all the words off in menus and on buttons. 6.0 LG G4

Thanks for letting us know! We’ve dug in and this is likely a text-style issue as others have reproduced the problem on different LG devices.

I would recommend that you go to your phone’s settings and change the font to something more standard (e.g., Roboto is the standard Android font) to see if it makes a difference. Apologies for this!

[Susan]

For instance, today I wanted to do the pork chops with peach salsa (it sounds so good) but no chance of finding peaches in my local grocery store, and I’m even spoiled being from the Bay Area.

Hi, Sophie! I’m from the Bay Area too. Just wanted to share a tip with you. I happened to have some frozen peaches for my smoothies. I guesstimated that a peach would be about 6-8 slices depending on the size of each slice. It worked great and didn’t leave the salsa watery or anything. This recipe was my first Mealime dinner and it was so good. I hope you get to try it soon.

-Susan

[Slaters]

It would be nice to have a couple of different menu options when adding items to the grocery cart manually. Currently you have to add the item, save it, then go back in to edit it to adjust quantity and place it in the correct category.

[Kipkristi]

It would be a nice pro feature if you could port nutritional info to fit bit or my fitness pal or another tracker! Loving mealime so far! Id also love breakfast and lunch options so I could do a week at a time meal planning

[Mataushas]

Are you planning to ever implement “target” calorie option? Perhaps make a meal builder for breakfast, lunch and dinner with parameters that we can set for calories etc?

[mitch]

Thanks for the suggestion! You’re right, this process should definitely be more streamlined! We intend to improve this soon.

[mitch]

@Kipkristi Thanks for the idea! Integrating with My Fitness Pal and other health trackers is definitely high up on our list of priorities, too. We’re looking in to breakfast / lunch options too. Hopefully we’ll have some exciting updates for you by spring time!

[mitch]

@Mataushas I definitely agree that Mealime can, and should, do more to help us optimize our diet. We’re trying to figure out the best way to do this. “Target calories” is a bit of a hotly debated topic right now. There are diets that encourage you to watch your calories, and ones that argue that it is more important where your calories come from, than how much you consume. Personally, I’m worried that adding a “target calories” option would encourage us to focus too much on calorie counting, at the expense of eating healthy, well-balanced food. We are thinking about implementing more powerful diet tracking options, like “target macros” (calories of carbs, protein, and fats), and others. But, as I mentioned, we are still discussing what the best option is. Hopefully we can come up with something that works great for you and everyone else! Happy to hear more suggestions!

[Britwooten]

I would love an extra column on the grocery list that would allow me to enter an estimated budget and/or store for each ingredient item.

[Mataushas]

There are always two schools of thought in everything, but I think overall, caloric intake is a “master” of all things to lose weight. Since you guys are the creators of the app, you are in control to put up recipes that are still healthy, if you weren’t the content creator and just a mere aggregation of recipes, then yes, 1 random meal of let’s say pizza and a milkshake will probably be close to 2000 calories haha. Anyway it’s just a suggestion and to make your app more powerful and better justify the subscription, a calorie target option for breakfast, lunch and dinner would be ideal for me.

https://examine.com/nutrition/what-should-i-eat-for-weight-loss/ - summary article of calories mattering more than specific foods. with multiple sources.
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/press/news/2015/10/type2diabetes/ - diabetes can be reversed with low cal diet alone.

[mitch]

Thanks again for your thoughts. You’re right that we have more control over each recipe being individually well balanced. We’ll definitely take a look at those articles and take this into further consideration. Cheers!