When you log a meal, NOYU works out what you ate and estimates what was in it. This covers what it captures and how far to trust each part.
Per food
For every item in a meal, NOYU identifies what it was, how it was cooked, and how much of it there was.
It then estimates calories, the four macros (protein, carbs, fat, fibre), added sugar, total sugar, saturated fat and salt.
It also classifies each food two ways behind the scenes:
- Food group: vegetable, fruit, whole grain, refined grain, legumes and nuts, dairy, fish and seafood, poultry, red meat, processed meat, oils and fats, sugary, beverage, other.
- How processed it is: whole, minimally processed, processed, or ultra-processed.
These classifications help NOYU read the quality of your overall food pattern. They are not shown on every food card.
How accurate to expect it to be
Reasonable on identification, rougher on quantity. That is the honest summary.
Naming a grilled chicken breast is a problem computer vision handles well. Judging whether it was 140g or 190g from a photograph is hard, and portion size is where most of the error lives. The calorie figure for a meal is a decent estimate, not a measurement.
What this means in practice:
- Trends are trustworthy, single meals less so. Whether your protein is typically low is a question the data can answer. Whether Tuesday's lunch was 620 or 700 calories is not.
- Photos beat descriptions for identification; descriptions beat photos for quantity. If you know you had 200g of rice, saying so is better than photographing it.
- Correct anything that looks wrong. It takes seconds and it improves everything downstream.
Photos and labels
You can attach several photos of the same meal, from different angles or including the packet. They are analysed together as one meal, not as several.
If there is no plated food but there is a nutrition label in the shot, NOYU reads the label instead. If there is no food at all, it says so rather than guessing.
What the numbers are compared against
On the nutrition page, calories, protein, carbs, fat and fibre are compared with your nutrition targets. Choose Targets beside the current period to use NOYU's recommendation, enter your own targets, or turn targets off.
- Calories, protein, carbs, fat and fibre use your recommended or custom targets.
- Added sugar, saturated fat and salt use UK guides, with saturated fat depending on your sex.
- Total sugar shows a value with no guide, since the meaningful limit is on added sugar rather than the sugar in whole fruit.
The recommended targets adapt to your current profile, goals and logged training. Custom targets stay as you set them.
Averages are per logged day
If you logged four days out of seven, your averages are over those four days. Days you did not log are not counted as zero.
Otherwise a week where you logged twice would show you eating almost nothing, which is worse than useless. The page tells you how many days you logged so you can judge the coverage yourself.
Salt and sodium
NOYU stores sodium and always shows you salt, converting between them. Salt is what UK labels and guidance use. If you compare with an app showing sodium in milligrams, the numbers will look very different and both will be right.
