# Smart Food Swaps: A Specific Lighter Dish, Not "Eat Less" SlimAI finds the dish you keep eating that costs the most, then offers a real alternative from the same cuisine with fewer calories and more protein per calorie saved — loggable in one tap. The advice that follows almost every over-target week is some version of "try to eat lighter". It is true, unhelpful, and impossible to act on at 7pm on a Tuesday. Smart Food Swaps replaces that with a specific dish. SlimAI looks at what you actually ate this week, finds the heavy item you repeated, and proposes a named alternative with its calories and protein visible before you commit — drawn from a food database of 50K+ items and filtered to your cuisine, your diet, and the things you told us you cannot eat. ## Where a Swap Beats a Human Coach A coach texts "try to get more protein in". You then have to work out what that means for the meal you are about to eat, find something that fits, guess its calories, and log it. Smart Food Swaps closes all four of those gaps at once. It names the dish, shows the numbers, and logs it in one tap through the exact same path your diet plan uses — so your calorie balance, your food entry, and everything downstream land identically to any other meal. This is the one place where software genuinely outperforms a human in the loop: not at understanding you, but at holding a food database in memory and doing the arithmetic instantly. ## How SlimAI Picks What to Swap The source item is not random. SlimAI looks for a pattern worth changing rather than a one-off indulgence. - **It has to be repeated:** The dish must appear at least twice in the week. Swapping something you ate once changes nothing about next week. - **It has to be heavy:** At least 250 kcal. Below that the swap is not worth the friction of changing a habit. - **It comes from your dominant meal:** SlimAI targets the meal type that carried the most calories that week, so the change lands where it actually matters. - **It is drawn from what you logged:** The candidate pool is your own recent food, not a generic "worst foods" list. If you never eat it, it never gets suggested. ## How SlimAI Picks the Replacement The alternative has to be genuinely better, genuinely edible, and genuinely yours — a swap you will never make is worse than no swap. - **At most 70% of the original calories:** A candidate that saves 30 kcal is noise. The threshold is a real cut, not a rounding difference. - **Same cuisine, preferred:** SlimAI looks inside the cuisine you chose first. A grilled chicken salad is not a useful substitute for a biryani you were going to eat anyway. - **Most protein per calorie saved:** Among the candidates that pass, the winner is the one that gives back the most protein for the calories it removes — the split that protects lean mass while you are in a deficit. - **Your diet is a hard filter:** If you set a preferred diet, a candidate whose diet type does not match is rejected outright. Nothing is assumed to be safe by default. ## Allergies and Dislikes: What the Filter Does and Does Not Do SlimAI asks about food allergies and dislikes during setup, and Smart Food Swaps filters candidates against your answers. Matching runs over dish and ingredient names, expanded through the nine common allergen families — milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, gluten, soy, and sesame — plus literal matching on whatever you typed in. The filter is deliberately over-eager: any hit rejects the candidate. A false rejection costs you one suggestion; a false acceptance costs far more. It is a screen, not a guarantee, and we will not describe it as one. It catches what a food record spells out and misses what it does not — a curry paste containing shellfish, an ingredient listed only as "sauce", a dish prepared differently where you live. If you have a diagnosed food allergy, treat every suggestion the way you would treat a menu: check it yourself before you eat it. ## One Tap to Log, Same as Any Other Meal Accepting a swap is not a special case. The suggestion logs through the same path your diet plan uses, so consumed calories, the food entry, your macro totals, and every daily signal that feeds AI Coach and Health Patterns land exactly as they would if you had searched for the dish yourself. You can also dismiss it. A suggestion you ignore is not counted against you anywhere — there is no adherence penalty for deciding you wanted the original. Open the item first if you want the detail: full ingredient list, nutrition facts, cooking time, and the serving control are all there before anything is written to your day. ## What Smart Food Swaps Needs A swap requires a repeated heavy item in a week you actually logged, and a matching candidate that survives every filter. When there is no honest suggestion, SlimAI shows nothing rather than dropping the standards to fill a card. Setting your cuisine and your preferred diet in the app improves the hit rate considerably — the narrower the filter, the more relevant the result, provided the database has coverage for it. Smart Food Swaps is part of SlimAI Pro. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### How do Smart Food Swaps work in SlimAI? SlimAI looks at the week you logged, finds a dish you ate at least twice that costs 250 kcal or more in your heaviest meal of the week, and proposes a specific alternative from its food database. The candidate must come in at 70% or less of the original calories, is preferred from the same cuisine, and among qualifying options SlimAI picks the one giving the most protein per calorie saved. You can open it, dismiss it, or log it in one tap. ### Does SlimAI respect my diet and my allergies when suggesting swaps? Yes to both, with an important limit. If you set a preferred diet, any candidate whose diet type does not match is rejected outright rather than assumed safe. Allergies and dislikes you entered are matched against dish and ingredient names, expanded through nine common allergen families — milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, gluten, soy, sesame. It is a screen over food records, not a safety guarantee: it cannot see an unlisted ingredient. If you have a diagnosed allergy, verify every suggestion yourself. ### Why is SlimAI not showing me a swap? A swap needs a dish you repeated at least twice in the week, costing at least 250 kcal, in your dominant meal type, plus a candidate that clears the calorie ceiling and every diet and allergen filter. If any of those is missing, SlimAI shows nothing rather than lowering the bar to fill the card. Setting your cuisine and preferred diet in the app improves how often a match is found. ### What happens when I accept a swap? It logs exactly like any other meal, through the same path your diet plan uses. Consumed calories, the food entry, your macro totals, and the daily data that feeds AI Coach and Health Patterns all update identically. You can adjust the serving or review the full ingredient and nutrition breakdown before it saves. ### Are Smart Food Swaps free? Smart Food Swaps are part of SlimAI Pro. The diet plan itself — recommended meals, quick meals under 10 minutes, and one-tap logging from your plan — is available without it. Source: https://www.slimai.ai/features/smart-food-swaps ## Try SlimAI To try SlimAI, download SlimAI Calorie Tracker from the Apple App Store or Google Play and start the 3-day free trial; SlimAI Pro is then $4.99/month or $34.99/year (under $3/month), and can be cancelled anytime from the Apple or Google account that manages the subscription. - Apple App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/slimai-calorie-tracker/id6749062571 - Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.slimai.app - Desktop (QR code): https://www.slimai.ai/download