Privacy Policy

Information we process

• Meal descriptions and selected meal components.
• A live speech transcription, if you choose to dictate a meal description.
• Meal photos or menu photos, if you choose to upload them.
• Grocery lists and checked grocery items.
• A packaged-food barcode, country, and language when you choose barcode lookup.
• Coach messages and Coach-created actions.
• Check-ins about energy, hunger, cravings, sleepiness, mood, and optional notes.
• App settings and preferences, including food allergies you choose to declare.
• Subscription status.
• Sign in with Apple identifier and email, if you choose to sign in.
• Pseudonymous app-session identifiers, expiry times, and refresh-token verifier digests when you enable account-backed features.

How information is used

• Save your meal journal and grocery lists.
• Generate meal-balance suggestions and Best Move recommendations.
• Filter recommendations against food allergies you have declared.
• Provide Coach replies and action cards.
• Create insights from meals, badges, selected actions, and check-ins.
• Manage subscriptions and account-backed features.
• Maintain app security, rate limits, and abuse prevention.

Device storage and iCloud sync

Meal entries, grocery lists, preferences, badges, and check-ins are stored on your device and may sync through Apple iCloud/CloudKit when iCloud is available for your Apple ID. Eat Steady uses a private iCloud database for app data sync; this data is handled by Apple under your iCloud account and is not sent to the Eat Steady backend unless you use server-backed Coach or photo recognition features.

Your user-declared food allergy profile is stored locally on your device and is not included in the app's CloudKit sync. It is included in app-data exports and is removed when you use Delete All App Data.

Server-backed Coach and product lookup features

If you use Premium server-backed Coach, each request sends your current message, your device's current local time and time zone, and the preferences or allergies you configured through the Eat Steady backend to OpenAI. It may also include up to eight recent turns from the current Coach conversation.

Saved meal and check-in history sharing with AI Coach is off by default. Settings names OpenAI and lets you explicitly enable or revoke this sharing. When enabled, a request may include up to five recent meal summaries and up to four derived learned-pattern summaries. If you directly ask about saved meals, the app searches its journal on your device first. With sharing off, or when no meals match, the app answers locally and does not send the lookup to Eat Steady's backend or OpenAI. With sharing on, it may send up to 12 matching, non-planned meals containing only their local calendar day, meal type, and bounded description.

Coach context does not include raw check-in notes, internal record identifiers, exact meal or check-in times, planned meals, or unrelated photos. If you use photo recognition, only the image you selected and its limited recognition context may be sent. Cloudflare hosts the production Eat Steady backend, and OpenAI provides AI processing. Eat Steady sends store: false, which disables OpenAI Responses API application-state storage. Unless Eat Steady's OpenAI organization is approved for Zero Data Retention, OpenAI may retain API request and response content in abuse-monitoring logs for up to 30 days under its API data controls.

The app treats AI output as untrusted. Native app logic validates actions before saving meals, grocery lists, reminders, or other objects.

If you use barcode lookup, the app sends the normalized barcode, country, and language to the authenticated Eat Steady backend. The backend may request information from Open Food Facts and, for US branded foods when configured, USDA FoodData Central. Results may be cached by barcode for a limited period. The backend does not share your identity with those product-data providers and does not log your barcode scan history.

Account sessions

When you choose Sign in with Apple, Eat Steady may create a renewable app-session family so account-backed features remain connected without asking you to sign in every hour. The live refresh token is stored in this device's Keychain with device-only accessibility and is not included in app-data exports or iCloud sync. The backend stores a pseudonymous account-routing value, session identifier, subscription state, expiration timestamps, and a cryptographic verifier digest rather than the plaintext refresh token.

Refresh tokens rotate after use and session families expire after no more than 30 days in the current protocol. Signing out attempts to revoke the current refresh family immediately and always removes local credentials. If the device is offline during sign-out, an access token already issued before sign-out may remain usable until its normal expiration, which is no more than one hour.

Third-party services

Eat Steady may use Apple services for Sign in with Apple, Apple Health, Speech Recognition, StoreKit subscriptions, local notifications, and iCloud/CloudKit sync. Cloudflare hosts the production Eat Steady backend, and OpenAI provides AI processing for Coach and photo recognition features. Eat Steady also uses Open Food Facts and optionally USDA FoodData Central for packaged-food barcode information.

Production iOS builds must not include raw OpenAI or third-party API keys.

Product details may be community-supplied, incomplete, outdated, or incorrect. Open Food Facts database content and images have attribution and reuse obligations; USDA FoodData Central data is public-domain/CC0 with source attribution requested.

Health data

Apple Health integration is optional and off until you choose to connect it. Eat Steady requests read-only access to steps, workouts, active energy, and sleep analysis. Apple lets you choose individual permissions and change them later in the Health app or system Settings. Denying or partially granting access does not disable the app's core features.

Raw Apple Health samples remain on your device. Readable data is reduced to broad signals such as activity lower than usual, typical, higher than usual, or unknown; whether a recent workout is reliably present or unknown; and a short, typical, long, or unknown sleep-duration band. This coarse context is stored locally, is removed when you disconnect Apple Health, and is not sent to Eat Steady's backend, OpenAI, advertising, or unrelated analytics. Missing Health data is treated as unknown, never zero.

The Home Screen widget and Apple Watch synchronization payload contain only the minimum Coach Action display state. They do not contain raw Health samples, Health measurements, authentication credentials, meal history, model prompts, or private notes.

Eat Steady does not request glucose, heart rate, dietary, insulin, medication, or other HealthKit types in this scope. It does not measure glucose, blood sugar, insulin, or medication use. If you choose to declare food allergies, Eat Steady processes that health-adjacent information as a preference so it can filter recommendations. The app does not diagnose or independently verify an allergy.

Allergy filtering relies on available ingredient, allergen, meal, and menu text. That information can be missing, incomplete, outdated, or incorrect, and the app cannot verify preparation practices or cross-contact. Eat Steady does not guarantee that any product, recipe, restaurant item, or suggestion is allergen-free. Always check current labels and ingredients and ask restaurant or food-service staff about allergens and cross-contact before eating.

Diagnostics and effectiveness

The app keeps privacy-safe feature counters on your device, such as whether onboarding, a meal check, a Best Move, or a Coach request completed. These counters do not contain meal text, photos, account identifiers, or Coach messages and are included when you export app data. Apple MetricKit may provide aggregate crash or hang diagnostics; Eat Steady records only diagnostic counts in the local export.

Photos

Meal or menu photos are used only to provide wellness meal-balance guidance. When you choose a photo, the app sends it for transient analysis with provider storage disabled and does not save the original image in your meal journal. Do not upload photos containing sensitive information you do not want processed for app functionality.

Voice input

If you tap Speak meal, Apple Speech Recognition processes microphone audio to return live text under your device and Apple service settings. Eat Steady does not write or retain the audio. The transcript remains editable and is retained as meal text only if you choose to save the meal.

Your controls

In Settings, you can add, change, clear, or decline to provide a food allergy profile; disable saving Coach meals; ask before saving Coach meals; disable saved-history sharing with AI Coach; delete Coach history, meal journal, or grocery history; export app data; and sign out.

Data deletion

You can export app data, including your food allergy profile, from Settings. You can also delete app data from Settings; Delete All App Data removes the locally stored allergy profile and local app-session credentials and attempts to revoke the current server refresh session. When iCloud sync is enabled, deleting synced app data can also remove that data from iCloud and other devices signed in to the same Apple ID. If you signed in with Apple or used server-backed Coach features, you can request deletion of all account-backed records and remaining sessions by emailing [email protected] or using the support page.

Contact

Support: [email protected]

Privacy contact: [email protected]