Great idea, fantastically executed. One suggestion or request: I would love to specify from what recipe group or combination of groups each meal should be made up of. For example:
Breakfast : Pick something from the cereals group, and a smoothie if it fits
Lunch : Sandwich group and salad group
Dinner : Mostly meat group, salad group, desert group.
Show HN: Automatic weekly meal planner, also plans your leftovers
271–280 of 296 posts
Re: Show HN: Automatic weekly meal planner, also plans your leftovers
#272OK, I tried this a bit, and while it looks good, it actually sucks.
For example, a pasta dish is generally supposed to have around 500 kcal, while this site lists less than 200 for "canned" pasta with tomato sauce (protip: no one eats canned pasta, except perhaps in the U.S.), and in general the site has no real clue about pasta.
The first fatal problem is that dishes must be divided both by type of preparation/acquisition (fast food, restaurant meal, basic cooking, microwaved food, no preparation, etc.) and by culture, since there dramatic differences in both.
Then it needs to know about how breakfast works in several cultures (in some you only eat "sweet" food, in others you have stuff like sausage and bacon), the concept of appetizer+pasta+meat/fish with side dish+dessert, how the various broad type of dishes (e.g. pasta, pizzas, steak, cakes,, etc.) work and so on.
Finally, it needs focus more on fundamental recipes, since no one is going to prepare anything complicated at home, and restaurants may not offer them or prepare such foods unpredictably, making the nutrient planning ineffective.
As it is, it's unusable unless you want to completely change your eating habits and eat in a highly weird fashion, or perhaps manually enter reasonable food choices.
Re: Show HN: Automatic weekly meal planner, also plans your leftovers
#273this. is. amazing.
Re: Show HN: Automatic weekly meal planner, also plans your leftovers
#274Have you considered parsing the Diabetes guidelines so that you could add an entry for people needing to follow that diet.
Re: Show HN: Automatic weekly meal planner, also plans your leftovers
#275This site could make a whole bunch of money if it just put together a shopping cart on Amazon for me and took the referral money.
As a note to people, http://www.amazongrocer.com/ and http://fresh.amazon.com/ exist.
Re: Show HN: Automatic weekly meal planner, also plans your leftovers
#276I think this is the best implementation of this kind of site I've used. I see you already include a paleo option and thats great, but as an ibs sufferer I also adhere to the fodmap diet's guidelines and have had a lot of success with it. This diet excludes foods such as garlic which you cannot currently exclude manually unless you block each individual recipe which I have done. It would be great if you gave a fodmap option or even just the ability to exclude these items. Here's further information on the subject:
http://blog.katescarlata.com/fodmaps-basics/
Another interesting take on the paleo side of things is the "perfect health diet" which the creators believe is optimised to help prevent disease, premature aging and the like, but is not strictly paleo. I've found the information covered in their book very interesting and I recommend their site for more information:
http://perfecthealthdiet.com/the-diet/
Again, great job, best of luck!
Re: Show HN: Automatic weekly meal planner, also plans your leftovers
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
Always have a version that has what seems like just plain stupidly high pricing. Many people wind up getting the majority of their revenue from such an option.
Ah yeah, I remember that from Patio11's Business of Software talk. I was under the impression that that was mostly for B2B SAAS startups, though, largely due to corporate politics and things like SLA requirements, and just generally not caring a whole lot about money. B2C is a whole different ballgame. If I'm wrong, though, I'd really like to know. There's also the potential to make this B2B with nutritionists/person…
Never underestimate someone's behavior of wanting the "best".
Re: Show HN: Automatic weekly meal planner, also plans your leftovers
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re right, thanks. Fixed. It does mean that if you drink 5 pints during a night on the town, you ingest 1100 kcalories. For me, that would mean half of my recommended daily caloric intake.
There's a saying in German that five beers (pints) are a meal. But you have to have a sixth beer, because you can't have a meal without a beer.
I lived with a German guy while he was working on his PhD - this statement brought back many wonderful memories!! Thanks for that - I'm going to have to call him and see if he wants to go out for dinner!!! :)
Re: Show HN: Automatic weekly meal planner, also plans your leftovers
#279Thanks a lot for including vegan meals! Btw, when I generated a vegan meal it included sausages in one of the recipes. Could be vegan sausages, but that should be more clear.
Re: Show HN: Automatic weekly meal planner, also plans your leftovers
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
+1 on Low carb isn't no carb. I had fantastic results on low carbs. I tried no carb once and it really will f k with your brain. Don't try no carbs!!!
> I tried no carb once and it really will fk with your brain. Interesting. For how long? I have seen people fast (i.e. no calories, but water and minerals etc) for two weeks, without too much messed up brains.
I've done extremely low carb diets a couple of times, and yes there is a 3-4 day period while your brain adjusts to running on ketones instead of glucose. Foggy brain for sure.