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, both of which appear on the meal:
- 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.
So a food shows something like "Whole grain, minimally processed" underneath it. That line often tells you more than the calorie count next to it.
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 you will see guides for some things and not others. This is deliberate.
- Calories have no target and no ring. We are not building a calorie scoreboard. The number is there because it is useful context.
- Protein is compared with a target from your body weight, so it only appears if your weight is on your profile.
- Carbs and fat use UK reference intakes.
- Fibre, added sugar, saturated fat and salt have 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 footer says it and it is worth repeating: these are UK guidance, not targets to hit every day.
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.
