Launched this week
Napkin Math
personalized AI food journal + nutrition coach
262 followers
personalized AI food journal + nutrition coach
262 followers
Napkin Math is the personalized AI food journal that helps people achieve their health goals. as simple as taking a photo of your food so cute you'll share it with a friend
Product Hunt
Napkin Math
@curiouskitty privacy and trust are critical at Napkin Math! First off, you control everything in the app and what is shared or kept private.
All notes about your meal, how you are feeling throughout the day are kept private, chats with our AI, and plans you build are kept private. Food is personal and Napkin Math is safe place whether you are managing a health condition, an eating disorder, or just your plan to cook more.
That said - people are sharing a lot! People share both their beautiful home cooked dinners and their scavenged leftover lunches.
People can share with their friends or globally in our social feed. We designed a simple upvote system to keep it positive when you share globally. And with friends we open up comments that we call "bites" to both praise their food and playfully remind them when they skip lunch (that's me 🙃).
We're looking to add more you can share in the future such as recipes or meals plans. Would love to hear anything else you might like to share about your food!
First off, I'm obssesed with your design. It's so fun, so refreshing, and really represents your "food is joyful" motto. Not a designer, just a user tired of the 'corporate minimalism' that at some point was everywhere (thankfully, it's improving little by little).
On the actual nutrition side, it's really cool how your approach isn't weight loss/tracking calories. I'm an MD in a nutrition residency and getting people to actually track everything is such a challenge, even when they have extreme symptoms like you did. Often all you get is a list of meals, no portion, no preparation method, not even all the spices and sauces they used specified. Napkin Math seems like a great solution to that.
My question is - you seem to be very focused on people helping themselves (with the help of AI). But do you plan to eventually make this available to healthcare providers? Plugging it into existing nutrition software or creating a provider portal where the physician/dietitian can follow multiple patients, look at patterns, look at medications taken, too (because in many cases people are on medication, often medication that can also cause GI symptoms, and we'd want to track that) would be really cool.
Napkin Math
@denitsapenchevavaltchanova Ahh! Love that you like our design!
And we absolutely want to work with healthcare providers - we have spoken to some nutritionists already but are seeking more to learn and work with. If you are interested I would love to connect find some time to chat about how we can help providers and patients with nutrition!
@castma I'd love to do that, let's connect! Just a disclaimer, though, I am based in Bulgaria which follows EU regulations and standards of care + obviously the healthcare system here vastly is different than the US. I'd love to help but I'll be more help on the European pov, not so much on the US one.
Napkin Math
@denitsapenchevavaltchanova We'd love to be global so I would still love to chat and am sure I can learn a lot from you!
Would you mind emailing us at founders@napkinmath.club and we can find a time!
Refocus
The photo-first approach is the smart part here. Most food trackers die on manual logging friction. I work on voice AI for older adults aging at home, and the same pattern shows up: any logging step that takes more than a few seconds just doesn't happen. Curious how Napkin Math handles foods that are hard to read from one photo, like a mixed home-cooked dish or a drink. Does it ask a quick follow-up, or infer from context?
Napkin Math
@igorgurovich Great question Igor! We do both!
Napkin Math does a great job of identifying even complicated dished from a single photo and you can add text to explain even more of what is in the dish. For example, a photo of a plate of piroshki (top of mind because I had these recently) could also have text explaining they were filled with mushrooms.
Photo-logging is the smart call here, because what kills food journals isn't motivation, it's friction... by day 4 nobody wants to type "grilled chicken, 180g" into a database. I build a habit app, so the moment I always come back to is the missed day. Someone logs for a week, skips three days, feels guilty, then quietly ghosts. What pulls them back, does the coach reach out, or is the "cute enough to share" part doing that work?
Napkin Math
@luca_capone You get it! Building a habit is hard and a lot of apps just lean on your willpower to keep doing the work. In short we make it fun, social, and have a coach to remind and adapt your plan.
Napkin Math is making food fun with a visual journal that you want to keep building on. Many people join just for the sharable calendar view.
Then the hidden unlock has been friends. We are seeing an increase of partners, families, and friends join the app where they remind their spouse to eat lunch (that's me 🙃) and beg their friends to show them where they got that matcha from.
For people tracking a specific goal we have exactly what you called out - a coach that reaches out to check-in. This helps remind people to stick to their plans but also adapts when you get sick, go on vacation, or only have two choices at the office lunch.
Just downloaded it and it's so cute. I'm very in the fiber maxing zone but I'm curious to know how well it works with Indian food. I already like that I have a voice entry feature cos I've been using gpt for it and get too lazy to create an actual GPT. I also like that I can tell it exactly how I want to track my nutrition and the different data points I want to take into account - where I am in my cycle, track my habits over a week, where my energy rises and crashes, log recipes so things can be repeatable, reminders to check in, track the time when I eat my meals and how to optimize that, and also when I work out.
it makes me feel in control.
Napkin Math
@arathy_kushalappa1 welcome to the Napkin Math community!
My wife is Indian and it captures her family's recipes quite accurately! And every time you log a meal, Napkin Math remembers it so you can reference it again. So if there are some extra ingredients maybe a photo can't capture - write those down when submitting (or the whole ingredient list if you want) and every time you log it again, it will remember!
You can also add a note after logging a meal to tweak anything like swapping between chicken and tofu or saying you added yogurt this time.
How does it track seasoning and sauces in dishes? Also can you upload workouts to the app to help evaluate your meal intake?
Napkin Math
@sasha_mcclendon You can always include written notes with your photo or even after you have submitted your photo. This updates the nutritional analysis and helps people accurate capture what they really ate such as seasoning or sauces.
As for workouts, yes, we integrate with Apple Health and are working on a beta to show more things you track like heart rate, sleep, hormonal heath, and more. For example, I track a plan to have Napkin Math remind me to eat more protein and hydrate after I go for runs!
Napkin Math
Nutrition tracking is for everyone.
A year ago, I suddenly had an intense stomach pain. My husband rushed me to the ER, where they gave me opioids and ultrasounds. And then I was handed the list. The list of food triggers, that covered 80% of my regular diet. I needed to track everything I ate, when I was in pain, and look for patterns.
So I went home and searched where I thought there would clearly be a solution: the app store. But I was shocked to find, that since my time in high school, food tracking was still only narrowly focused on calorie deficits.
That's why we built Napkin Math.
A nutrition tracker built to be hyper-personalized to your health goals. It feels joyful, social, and playful. All the while, your data works for you and supports you on your personal health journey. Think "Strava for Food": you log, you learn patterns, and you do it alongside your community in a beautiful journal.
We'd love your feedback! What's worked (or really hasn't) for you and food?
@jynnie Congrats on the launch, Jynnie. The fact that this came out of a real experience with your own gut health makes the product feel different from everything else in this space.
One thing I noticed: the story you just shared in this comment is the sharpest, most emotionally specific copy for Napkin Math that exists anywhere. The ER visit, the list of food triggers, opening the App Store and finding nothing but calorie counters. Someone with a mystery gut issue or unexplained energy crashes would read that and feel completely seen.
The homepage doesn't have any of it. Curious whether that was a deliberate choice to keep things minimal?
(direct response copywriter, which means I can't read a homepage without doing this)
Napkin Math
@oluwatooni Hi! Thank you so much. Haha to be honest, we've been so busy building the app with the community, I haven't found time to update the homepage. (It's definitely more minimal than ideal). I've been sharing my story on IG and socials, and have really felt that there are so many people, like me, who have struggled to find something for them. So this is a great reminder for me to update the home page too!