Frequently Asked Questions

You can delete your account by going to your Profile settings and clicking on the "Delete Account" option at the bottom of the page. Alternatively, you can submit a support ticket requesting account deletion, and our team will process it for you.

Please note that deleting your account will permanently remove all your data, including your food diary entries, exercise logs, and other personal information.

Your privacy is important to us. We collect and process your data solely to provide and improve our services. This includes your account information, health and fitness data, and interactions with our AI features.

All data is encrypted in transit via HTTPS. While the servers run in secure, access-controlled environments, the database itself is not encrypted at rest. For more information, please refer to our Privacy Policy.

Yes, you can request the deletion of specific data from your account, such as photos, chat history, or particular entries. To do this, please submit a support ticket with the type "Request Data Deletion" and specify which data you would like removed.

Our team will process your request and confirm when the data has been deleted.

Our AI food recognition system is highly accurate for most common foods and meals. It can identify multiple food items in a single photo and estimate portion sizes.

However, the accuracy may vary depending on factors such as image quality, lighting conditions, and the complexity of the meal. You can always manually adjust the results if needed.

To connect your Strava account:

1. Go to your Profile
2. Locate the "Integrations" section
3. Click on "Connect Strava"
4. Follow the authorization prompts

Once connected, your Strava activities will automatically sync with Healthy Beetle.

Healthy Beetle allows you to save and organize your favorite meals for quick and easy logging:

1. When adding or editing a food entry, check the "Save to Favorites" option
2. Create custom categories from the Favorites page by clicking "Add Category"
3. Assign favorites to specific categories for better organization
4. Access your favorites from the Food Diary page or via the quick menu

When you log food, we total the grams of protein, carbs and fat you ate and convert them to calories:

• Protein → grams × 4 cal
• Carbohydrates → grams × 4 cal
• Fat → grams × 9 cal

Your macro targets start as percentages of your daily calorie goal (for example, 30% protein, 40% carbs, 30% fat). We convert those percentages to target calories, then show:

percentage = (calories from that macro)
            ÷ (target calories for that macro) × 100%
                            

Example (2,000 calorie goal, 30% protein):

• Target protein = 30% × 2,000 cal = 600 cal
• If you've eaten 120g protein → 120g × 4 cal = 480 cal
• Macro display = 480 ÷ 600 × 100 ≈ 80%

So the percentages you see are always based on calories contributed by each macro, not the gram totals themselves.

Protein per-lb targeting fixes your protein intake based on your body weight instead of using a percentage of calories. This is how many athletes and nutritionists actually plan protein intake.

When OFF (Classic % Mode):

• You set protein, carbs, and fat as percentages of your daily calories
• All three must add up to 100%
• If your calorie goal changes, your protein grams change too

When ON (g/lb Mode):

• Protein = your chosen g/lb × your body weight
• Fat = a percentage of your base calories (typically 25-30%)
• Carbs = whatever calories remain
• Your protein stays constant even if calories change

Example: If you weigh 150 lbs and set 0.8 g/lb, you'll always target 120g protein (480 calories) regardless of your total calorie goal.

To enable protein per-lb mode:

1. Go to Profile → Nutrition tab
2. Find the "Use protein per-lb targeting" toggle
3. Turn the toggle ON
4. Enter your target g/lb (typically 0.7-1.1)
5. Set your fat percentage (usually 25-30%)
6. Click Save Changes

Recommended g/lb ranges:

• Weight loss: 0.8-1.0 g/lb (preserves muscle during deficit)
• Maintenance: 0.7-0.9 g/lb (supports daily activity)
• Muscle gain: 0.9-1.1 g/lb (supports growth)

To switch back to percentage mode:

1. Turn the toggle OFF
2. Set your protein, carbs, and fat percentages (must total 100%)
3. Save your changes

In protein per-lb mode: Your base protein stays fixed at g/lb × weight, but on heavy training days, Healthy Beetle adds a small protein bonus:

• 300-599 calories burned: +10g protein
• 600+ calories burned: +20g protein

Why the bonus? Extra protein on hard training days helps with muscle recovery and repair, especially after resistance training or long endurance sessions.

How exercise calories are allocated:

• 90% goes to carbs (quick energy replenishment)
• 10% goes to fat (essential fatty acids)
• The small protein bonus comes from this pool first

In classic % mode: When you burn calories through exercise, all your macros scale up proportionally based on your set percentages.

Healthy Beetle uses the Open Food Facts (OFF) community database to verify and enhance AI nutrition estimates. Here's how it works:

1. AI drafts the meal - GPT-4o identifies every item it can see/you describe and estimates weight, calories & macros. Items appear with a confidence %.
2. Open Food Facts lookup - For barcoded items and well-known foods, we query Open Food Facts for the official nutrition panel.
3. Label macros replace estimates - When Open Food Facts returns complete nutrition, we overwrite the AI values with those label numbers scaled to your portion. Confidence is capped at 90%.
4. Smart caching - All lookups are cached to minimize API calls and keep response times fast.
5. Fallbacks & flags - If Open Food Facts data is missing or looks unreliable, we keep the AI estimate but flag it with lower confidence (amber/red badge).
6. Final sanity check - We reconcile calories with macros and apply food-specific rules (e.g., adding fat for buttered toast) so totals always make sense.

These badges indicate we matched the item to the public Open Food Facts database. When you see this badge, the calories, macros, and label nutrients come directly from the Open Food Facts entry scaled to your portion size.

This provides crowd-sourced, barcode-specific nutrition data that is refreshed regularly.

We only apply Open Food Facts data when:

1. The item has a barcode or clear match in the Open Food Facts catalog, AND
2. The entry includes a complete nutrition panel we can scale to your portion

If either check fails, we keep the AI estimate but lower the confidence so you know to double-check. Items without Open Food Facts verification will show amber or red confidence indicators.

No. The app only sends the barcode or food name (e.g., "avocado toast") to the Open Food Facts database and receives back public nutrition data. No personal information about you or your photos ever leaves Healthy Beetle's servers when querying Open Food Facts.

You can always edit any food item by tapping the edit button (✏️). Any manual change immediately overrides the Open Food Facts value, and the badge will turn grey to indicate it's now user-edited rather than database-verified.

For foods not found in the Open Food Facts catalog, we use the AI estimate and display a lower confidence indicator. This includes:

• International or ethnic foods not common in the US
• Restaurant-specific dishes
• Homemade recipes with unique ingredients
• Very new food products

These items will show amber or red confidence badges to remind you to review the nutrition data.

Every time we import a workout we decide which calorie method is the most reliable for that activity.

1. Calories from Strava — If Strava already supplies its own calorie number, we keep it untouched.
2. Kilojoules — For rides with a real power meter Strava gives total work in kJ; we convert kJ → kcal (1 kcal ≈ 1 kJ).
3. Average Watts — If power comes from a real meter but Strava omitted calories, we multiply  avg watts × hours × 3.6.
4. Heart-rate
   • If you saved your Max HR in Profile we scale the Keytel (2005) formula with that value.
   • If Max HR is blank we use your age-based estimate (220 – age).
5. Speed / distance fallback — For workouts that have neither power nor HR we estimate calories from distance, speed and sport-type.

You can see which method was used under each workout: "Calories imported from Strava", "calculated from power", "calculated using your Max-HR", etc.

Note — power-based calories require a true power meter. If Strava marked the data as an estimate ("device watts = false") we ignore it and fall back to heart-rate.