🍽️ Food Tracking

✨ What It Does

Food Tracking is the daily food journal you’ll actually keep. It lets you jot down what you ate, snap a quick photo if you have one, and see how those meals stack up against the targets you care about—no spreadsheet or calorie math required.

🚪 Access & Activation

Enable Food from Settings → Features → Food. See the Enabling Features guide for details on feature toggles and visibility options.

🧭 Core Workflow

• Use the Food page day navigator to choose the date you’re logging for, then hit Log food or open the floating action button. The form prefills the selected day and supports backdating.
• Every meal can include macros, on/off-path status, optional reasons, and photos—incoming sections explain how to slim the form down or let Benji fill in details for you.
• The card menu (•••) beside every meal lets you duplicate a meal, analyze it with AI, or save it as a template for faster logging later.

🛠️ In-Feature Settings

• Open Settings → Features → Food → Customize food tracking form to choose which fields appear. Switch off whatever you don’t need (name, photo, time, macros, portion size, meal type, healthiness, reasons, “aligned with goals”) so the form stays lightweight.
• The same panel controls what shows in the list: score ring, thumbs up/down chart, and “time since last meal.” Toggling these affects both the cards and the sidebar stats immediately.
• Templates live in the Templates popover (top right). Selecting one opens the meal form prefilled with its saved values—including on-path status, macros, portion, and meal type. Convert any log into a reusable template via the meal menu → Save as a template.
• Create daily macro goals from the sidebar’s Create a macro goal button. Each goal activates on its start date and stays in effect until you add a newer goal, keeping historical days intact. Adjusting targets mid-program? Add a new goal instead of editing the old one so Benji preserves history.
• The sidebar stats—alignment ring, food score ring, macro totals, and “time since last meal”—mirror whichever toggles you enable in this settings panel.

🔐 Global Settings & Privacy

• Feature switching and field visibility all live under Settings → Features → Food.
• Timeline visibility follows the Meals privacy control at Settings → Privacy → Meals. It defaults to Private; switch to Followers or Public if you want meal updates to appear in other timelines.

📊 Widgets & Dashboards

• Home dashboard: Enable Show a home widget for Food in Settings → Features → Food, then arrange it in My Day or the dashboard layout. The widget lists today’s meals with calories and macro badges.
• Summary page: Flip on Show food events in the summary sidebar to display the Food score ring and meal count for the selected day.
• My Day: Add the Food widget from the My Day widget picker to see recent meals and quick actions; it links back to the Food page via the widget header.

⚡ Alfred & Quick Actions

Learn more about Alfred in the Alfred & Spotlight guide.

• Log food: opens the meal form with the current date
• Saved templates appear as quick actions—type a template name to create a meal from it instantly

🤖 Benji AI

• Activate Benji AI with Cmd/Ctrl + I, then ask something like “Estimate macros for a grilled salmon bowl with quinoa, spinach, and feta” to get protein, carb, and fat targets you can paste into the meal form.
• After saving a meal, choose Analyze with AI from the card menu to have Benji fill macros, portion size, and healthiness automatically; refresh with Option/Alt + R if you want to pull in the updated numbers immediately.

⌨️ Keyboard Shortcuts

• Cmd/Ctrl + K: open Alfred to access Food commands
• Option/Alt + R: refresh the Food page after an AI analysis finishes to pull in the updated macros

🏆 Timeline & Points

• Benji can share meal updates automatically when you log from a template or choose to post; those updates follow the Meals privacy setting.
• Every food log awards 3 points in the timeline leaderboard (Food log in the point system), whether or not you share it publicly.
• Delete or edit the meal to remove its timeline entry at the same time.

🔗 Integrations & Dependencies

• Macro goals and food score data surface across Benji: the Summary page ring, My Day widget tiles, and the timeline leaderboard all reuse the same underlying totals.
• Planner events that reference meals respect the same privacy and point rules, so keeping your settings tidy ensures downstream widgets stay accurate.
• Templates and AI analysis rely on shared services (OpenAI keys, template storage), so confirm those integrations before troubleshooting missing data.

💡 Tips & Edge Cases

• Duplicate meals for recurring favorites, then adjust before saving so the original stays intact.
• If AI analysis doesn’t populate macros, make sure the log has enough detail (ideally a photo) and that your OpenAI key is still valid, then refresh with Option/Alt + R.