Since the algorithms do not make any decisions about which meals are 'better', they will return any results that fit your preferences. This can lead to less than optimal grocery lists. Here are the most common issues that can lead to an overly long grocery list:

  • Not enough recipes fit your preferences - some dietary strategies, especially very strict low carb and low fat diets, may require specialty ingredients or modifications to recipes that are not yet a part of our database. This should improve as users continue to add and customize recipes.
  • Recipes in your plan use similar but distinct ingredients - The most common example of this is finding 3 different types of milk on the grocery list - the generator will not automatically make substitutions since this could affect the macros or cooking process. If you notice this simply find the offending recipes and customize them to use the milk of your choice - this is a permanent change so over time the lists will keep improving.
  • High Variety of Recipes in the Plan - It can be hard to have 21 unique meals in a week, but the generator will attempt to do that unless you allow for more variety using the leftovers, or recurring foods settings.
For details of how to make your grocery list shorter see:

How do I make my grocery list shorter?