Food Library

The food library is your searchable database of foods with nutritional data. It powers the meal plan builder — when you add a food to a meal, you're pulling from this library.

Core food library

The core food library is always available. It contains the standard foods every coach can search, plus the custom foods coaches create today. Custom foods are currently shared with other coaches, so the core library grows as coaches add useful entries.

Regional food libraries

Your clients don't all eat the same foods. A client in São Paulo eats feijão and farofa; a client in Munich eats Quark and rye bread. Regional food libraries are extra collections of local foods, with accurate local nutrition data, that you can switch on so they appear in your food search while you build meal plans.

Each library is off by default. You turn on only the ones that match the clients you coach, and your core food library stays available either way.

Libraries available today

Library	Foods	Nutrition data from
Brazilian	586	TACO food table (NEPA/UNICAMP)
German	483	German national food database (Max Rubner-Institut)
Spanish and Latin American	543	USDA FoodData Central
Serbian	473	Contributed by a coach on the platform

We add more over time. Each library's foods come from a national food database, so the macros reflect the local version of a food rather than a US substitute.

Turning a library on

1. Open Settings.
2. Find Food libraries.
3. Turn on the library you want to use.

The change saves immediately, and those foods then appear when you search while building meal plans. Each coach chooses their own libraries, so turning one on does not change another coach's searches.

When to use it

Turn on a library when you coach clients who eat that region's foods. It saves you from building the same local staples by hand for every client, and it keeps the macros accurate to what your client actually eats, which makes the plan easier for them to follow.

Turning a library off removes its foods from new searches. Foods already used in your meal plans and templates stay exactly as they are. If you later reuse a template containing one of those foods, Assistant Coach will ask you to turn the library on first.

tip

Can't find a regional food in the meal builder? Use Manage food libraries below the no-results message to go straight to the right setting.

Searching for foods

In the meal plan builder, the right-side panel is your food search. Type at least 2 characters to start searching. Results appear after a brief delay and include:

• Food name
• Category (e.g., Protein, Carbs, Dairy)
• Serving info (e.g., "Per 100g")
• Nutritional breakdown — Calories, protein, carbs, and fat per serving

When the search box is empty, you'll see your most-used foods — the top 20 foods you've added to meal plans most frequently. These popular foods make it fast to add staples without typing anything.

Creating custom foods

Can't find what you need? Click New Food in the search panel to add your own.

The creation form includes:

• Food Name (required) — e.g., "Overnight Oats with Honey"
• Category (optional) — e.g., "Grains", "Protein", "Dairy"
• Serving Size — Defaults to 100
• Unit — Choose from grams, ml, cup, piece, or serving
• Nutrition per serving:
  • Calories
  • Protein (g)
  • Carbs (g)
  • Fat (g)

Once created, the food is immediately available in your search results and can be added to any meal plan.

Custom foods remain part of the shared core library. Regional libraries contain curated reference foods and cannot be edited or deleted from the regular food-management screen.

tip

When creating custom foods, think about how your client will measure them. If a food is more naturally measured by the piece (like eggs) or by the cup (like rice), set the serving unit accordingly. This makes the meal plan clearer for the client.

Managing custom foods

Custom foods you've created are marked in the library. You can:

• Edit — Update the name, category, or nutritional values
• Delete — Remove a custom food from your library

There's one important safeguard: you cannot delete a food that's currently used in any meal plan. You'll need to remove it from all plans first. This prevents accidentally breaking existing meal plans.

How nutritional calculations work

When you add a food to a meal and set a quantity, the system calculates the nutritional values proportionally:

Formula: (food's nutrition per serving) × (your quantity) ÷ (food's serving size)

For example, if a food has:

• 200 calories per 100g serving
• You set the quantity to 150g
• Calculated calories = 200 × 150 ÷ 100 = 300 calories

The same formula applies to protein, carbs, and fat. All values are rounded to one decimal place.

These per-food calculations roll up into meal totals (sum of all foods in that meal) and then into plan totals (sum of all meals), which are displayed in the nutritional dashboard at the top of the builder.

Search tips

• Search by name — "chicken breast", "brown rice", "protein shake"
• Search by brand — If foods have brand information, you can search by that too
• Search by category — "protein", "dairy", "snack"
• Use popular foods — Clear the search box to see your most-used items for quick access

If a search returns no results, you'll see an option to create the food right from the search — so you never have to interrupt your workflow to add something new.