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Draft: not yet reviewed by a clinician

Use this page to prepare questions for your care team. It does not replace their advice. Your own targets and doses come from your nephrologist, diabetes team and renal dietitian.

Logging food

Logging means telling the app what you ate, how much, and at which meal. It then adds up your day and shows warnings before you save, so you can change the portion first (architecture contract).

  1. Tap Add.
  2. Type a few words, for example rice white. Every word must match, so fewer words find more. With the box empty you see Recent foods, the ones you log most recently, first.
  3. Tap a category chip (Fruits, Vegetables, Beverages …) to narrow the list.
  4. Tap the food. The sheet shows its warnings and the numbers for this amount.
  5. Pick the meal (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner or Snack) and the amount.
  6. Choose Eaten or Planned. Today and past days start on Eaten, future days on Planned.
  7. Tap Add to meal.

The builtin list has about 400 common foods from USDA FoodData Central, each with a household serving such as "1 cup (158 g)" (USDA FoodData Central).

Servings or grams

You can enter servings (steps of ¼) or grams. If you weigh your food, type the grams and the app works out the servings for you.

You ate Food's serving Enter The app logs
1 cup of cooked white rice 1 cup (158 g) 1 serving 45 g carbs, 55 mg potassium
100 g of the same rice, weighed 1 cup (158 g) 100 grams 0.63 servings: 28 g carbs, 35 mg potassium
half a banana 1 medium (118 g) 0.5 servings 13.5 g carbs, 211 mg potassium

Weighing is the most accurate way to count carbohydrate (Carb counting).

Change or delete an entry

On Today, tap the entry. Change the amount, meal, day or note, then Save changes, or tap Delete. Planned entries have an Eaten button; Mark all eaten turns a whole meal's plan into eaten food (Planning meals).

Quick add: type in a label

Use Add → Quick add for a packaged food that is not in the list.

  1. Enter the name and the serving as the label says it ("2 cakes") and its weight in grams.
  2. Copy the numbers per serving from the Nutrition Facts label.
  3. Leave a box empty when the label does not list that nutrient. Do not type 0: empty means "unknown". The food's row then says not listed, and every total that misses it says so: the bar on Today shows "≥ 55 / 3,500 mg" or "not listed" with Not complete (never a green OK) and "1 food does not list potassium, so the total may be higher", the meal line reads "K ≥ 55 (+ 1 not listed)", and Trends, Plan and the 7-day averages mark those days "not complete". A saved meal with that food shows "K ≥ 55 (+ 1 not listed)" or "K not listed" the same way, on Plan, in the shortcuts on Add, in What fits now, in a day plan and in AI meal ideas.
  4. Copy the ingredient list into Ingredients (optional, but worth it). The app checks it as you type and shows "Phosphate additives" or "Potassium additives" when it finds one (for example sodium phosphate or potassium chloride); saving sets the same flags. You can also tick them yourself under Flags, and Counts as fluid for drinks.
  5. If the package has a barcode, type its digits into Barcode (optional): scanning it next time finds this food.
  6. Enter how many servings you ate, then tap Log it. The food is kept as your own food for next time.

Use a photo of the label shows a picture of the label beside the form (above it on a phone), with 1×, 2× and 3× zoom, so you can copy the numbers without holding the package. The photo stays on your phone. If your admin turned on AI and you opted in, Read the label for me (AI) fills in the boxes from the photo; fields filled this way are marked "from photo" until you check and change them (Optional AI).

On a US label potassium must be listed, but phosphorus does not have to be (FDA; NKF label guide). See Reading a label for what each line means.

Scan a barcode

Add → Scan a barcode reads a packaged food's barcode with the camera, from a photo, or from the digits you type. Your phone reads the code itself and sends only the number to your server. A food you saved with that barcode is always found; other products are looked up only if your admin turned on barcode lookups (design note 03). The details, and what to do when a product is not found, are on Barcodes and label photos.

Search USDA

If your admin added a USDA key, Add → Search USDA looks through the full FoodData Central database, including branded foods. Tap Import to copy one into your list. Imported foods use a 100 g serving unless USDA gives a household portion, so check the serving before you log (architecture contract). You can also add your own free USDA key in Settings → Food data (USDA API guide; Settings and keys). "USDA search is not set up on this server" means nobody has added a key yet: add your own, or ask your admin to share one. USDA can take a few seconds to answer. If you search again before it does, you see only the newest results.

Your own foods

  • Builtin foods cannot be changed, and neither can foods imported from USDA or found by barcode: they are shared reference data that you add to your list. A food you add with Quick add is yours and only you can see it.
  • To remove a food from your list, open it from Add and tap Delete food. If one of your own foods is already in your log, it is only hidden from search; your old entries keep their numbers.
  • To fix a mistake in one of your foods, add it again with the right numbers and delete the old one.
  • Each entry keeps a snapshot of the numbers at the time you logged it, so fixing a food later does not rewrite your history.

Low treatments

Treat first, log later

If your glucose is under 70 mg/dL (3.9 mmol/L), treat it straight away with 15 g of fast carbohydrate, check again after 15 minutes, and repeat if you are still low (ADA 2026, section 6; Treating a low). Log it afterwards.

  • Search glucose to find glucose tablets, gel and liquid shots. Measured juices, lemon-lime soda, ginger ale, hard candy, jelly beans, honey and sugar in a treatment-sized portion are marked as low treatments too.
  • These foods get no carbohydrate warning: fast carbohydrate is the point. Their potassium, sodium and fluid still count, so you can see which treatment suits your kidneys best (Targets and warnings).
  • Used to treat a low: the box under the warnings when you log a low-treatment food (ticked for you), or any food if you have diabetes. A ticked entry still counts toward your potassium, sodium and fluid for the day, but never toward the meal's carbohydrate or the meal suggestions, and the warnings become a plain note with the numbers. Instead of swap ideas the sheet then shows For your next low: other low treatments with at least your usual treatment amount and less potassium (design note 06; Meal guidance).

Offline

Add, Quick add, Mark eaten and editing or deleting an entry also work with no connection. The entry, or the change, waits on your phone with a "waiting to sync" badge and is sent when you are back online, once, even if the connection drops halfway. A badge at the top shows how many wait; tap it to see them. Changing your profile or targets, scanning a barcode and meal suggestions still need the server, and the app says so instead of saving it (design note 02; Install the app).

Nothing you changed on one device is overwritten by another without asking. A change you make offline is sent together with the version of the entry you saw. If the same entry was changed on another device in the meantime, your change is held back and Settings → This device shows a card: "This entry was changed on another device while you were offline". It shows what your server has and your change side by side. Tap Keep the saved one to drop your change, or Use mine to send it on top of what is there now. If the entry was deleted elsewhere, the app says "This entry no longer exists" and drops your change. An entry you added offline that has not been sent yet is changed or deleted on the phone itself. If you change or delete it just as it is being sent, your change is sent right after it, so your server keeps what you did last. That holds even if you opened the entry before it reached your server and save it after. Treating a low is changed and deleted like any other entry.

Your phone also keeps a copy of the last two weeks and the coming week, so Today opens while you are offline when the app was installed from an https:// address (it says it is showing the copy saved on this device), and search finds the foods this phone has seen. If your server has a problem loading a day, Today says the day could not be loaded and offers Retry. It never shows another day's food under that date. Signing out deletes everything the app kept on the phone, so it asks first when entries are still waiting to sync.

If the server refuses a waiting entry when it arrives (for example, the food was deleted in the meantime), the entry is kept as not saved with the reason under Settings → This device. Tap Retry or Discard; nothing is thrown away without you seeing it. If you discard an entry while it is being sent, it may have reached your server already, so the app deletes it there too. Signing out does the same, and tells you if an entry could not be deleted.

What to do

  • Log as you go, not at the end of the day. Include drinks, sauces and low treatments.
  • Weigh foods you eat often for a week, then you will know your usual portions (Portions).
  • Check the serving size on every Quick add and USDA import.
  • Save meals you repeat (Planning meals).

If something goes wrong

  • "No foods match." Use fewer words or a different word ("chicken breast" instead of "grilled chicken"), try Quick add, or search USDA.
  • "Could not search." The search did not work, so the old results are cleared. Tap Retry.
  • The numbers look far too high. The serving is probably 100 g while you ate less, or the other way round. Enter grams instead.
  • A food has no potassium value. Check the package label and add a corrected copy with Quick add.

Sources

Not yet reviewed by a clinician. Facts and sources last checked 2026-10-07.