Recurring foods are useful for quickly getting the meal plans to reflect your existing eating habits. We've found if our meal plans look mostly like what we already eat, just with better portions and some tasty new recipes once in a while, we stick to the plan much better.
Tips for success:
If you have a breakfast you like to eat every morning, select the foods or recipes to show up "always" during your breakfast meal. If you want your breakfasts to have some variety, but only between 3 or 4 recipes, select those recipes to recur "often." If you ONLY want those recipes, you can tell a meal type to "only use recurring foods," and then the generator will only use your selected foods while still handling the portion control.
The best way to have total control over the meal plans is to find a bunch of foods and recipes that you know you'll like or you want to try, set them to recur "often" in a meal, and have the meal only use your recurring foods. Ideally select 15-20 foods if you want some variety, and the generator will build your meal plan from only those foods.
A good routine is to set Breakfast to always have one or two staple foods that you like, lunch to have a handful of foods that you like to rotate between (or a standard restaurant meal if you eat out), and leave dinner a surprise that will round out your nutrition targets with whatever nutrients are missing.
We may add more frequencies other than "always" and "often" later, but if you just want something to recur only slightly more often than normal, click the food to open more details, and then "Star" it to add to favorites, or give it a thumbs up to tell our algorithms you like it.
If you want a food to never show up, use the "thumbs down" button.
To add a Recurring Food on the website:
1. Click "Recurring Foods" in the left sidebar.
2. From here, find a food or recipe you want from the food bank search in the left sidebar, and either drag it into the meal you want, or click "+" to add it to one of your Recurring Foods lists.
3. After you have the food or recipe in your list, you can then choose to set it to "often" or "always." You can also choose to check off the "only use recurring foods for this meal" box if you want the generator to only use recurring foods for that meal type when building your meal plans.
4. Alternatively, you can also add Recurring Foods directly from recipe pages. Click on the pushpin icon when viewing the recipe's details page to bring up a pop-up that will allow you to do so.
To add a Recurring Food on the app:
1. In the app you can add Recurring Foods when editing a meal's settings. Tap the 3-dot menu button next to the meal you want to add Recurring Foods to, then tap "Edit meal settings."
2. From here, tap the arrow next to "Recurring Foods" and then the "+" at the top right of the next screen to search the food bank for the food/recipe you wish to add as recurring.
3. Tap on the "+" next to the food/recipe you wish to add as recurring, then tap "Add" at the bottom of the screen. You can then choose to either set it as recurring "Often" or "Always" from the drop-down menu.
4. When you're finished adding the foods/recipes, tap the back arrow. You can then toggle the "Suggested Recipes" off if you'd prefer to only use Recurring Foods for this meal when your meal plans are created. When finished, tap "Save" in the top right of the screen.
5. Another way to add Recurring Foods is from the recipe's details page itself. When viewing a recipe's page, tap on the 3-dot menu button that says "More" and then tap "Set as Recurring" to do so.
