MealTag Privacy Policy
Effective date:
The short version: Your food log belongs to you, stays on your devices and in your own iCloud, and is never sold, shared for advertising, or used to track you. MealTag has no user accounts and no analytics SDKs.
1. Overview
MealTag is built by Rocky River Software, LLC. MealTag is a private nutrition coach for iPhone and iPad: deterministic math computes your targets and day state on your device, and optional AI features receive only an anonymous structured summary — never your food log, never your identity.
Your food log belongs to you. It stays on your devices and in your own private iCloud, and it is never sold, shared for advertising, or used to track you. MealTag has no user accounts and no analytics SDKs.
2. What MealTag Stores, and Where
Your food log, goals, and preferences — the meals you log, your calorie and macro targets, your day plans and weekly check-ins (which can include an optional body-weight entry), and your dietary restrictions, allergies, disliked foods, and cuisine preferences — are stored on your device and synced through your personal iCloud account via Apple's CloudKit.
Rocky River Software cannot read this data. It lives in your private iCloud database, protected by your Apple ID. See Apple's privacy policy.
Your Apple Health data (active energy, steps, workouts, and body weight) is handled separately and only if you choose to connect it — see the next section.
3. Apple Health (HealthKit)
Health Data Disclosure
MealTag will not use or disclose health or fitness data obtained from Apple HealthKit to any third party for advertising, marketing, or other use-based data mining purposes, and will never sell it. Health data is read on demand, displayed in the app, and never stored on any server.
If you choose to connect Apple Health, MealTag reads your activity and body data (active energy, steps, workouts, and — if you use weekly check-ins — body weight) on demand to adjust your daily guidance. It is displayed in the app and factored into your remaining calorie budget and weight trend. MealTag requests read-only access.
MealTag never writes to Apple Health and never stores your Health data on any server.
You can revoke MealTag's access to Apple Health at any time in Settings > Health > Data Access & Devices > MealTag on your iPhone.
4. AI Features and What Leaves Your Device
The AI features are part of MealTag+, an optional subscription. When you use a MealTag+ AI feature, MealTag sends a structured summary to our suggestion service — a proxy hosted on Google Cloud (Firebase) that holds our OpenAI key and forwards your request to OpenAI, then returns the response. Google acts only as our hosting provider for that proxy and stores none of your content. Depending on the feature, that summary contains only what is needed:
- AI meal ideas and the AI day plan: remaining calories, protein, carbs, fat, and fiber for the day; your goal type and coaching style (e.g., "Lose weight", "Flexible"); status flags (e.g., "Low protein"); dietary restrictions, allergies, disliked foods, and preferred cuisines; and titles of suggestions you previously accepted or rejected.
- Type-to-log: the food description you typed (e.g., "two eggs and toast"), so it can be turned into nutrition estimates.
What this summary does not contain
Your name, email, location, identifiers, your food log history, or raw Apple Health data.
Some figures in the summary — such as your remaining calorie budget — may be influenced by activity read from Apple Health, but no raw Health samples ever leave your device, and Health data is never used for advertising or shared with data brokers.
Data sent to OpenAI's API is not used to train OpenAI's models, and is retained by OpenAI for up to 30 days for abuse monitoring before deletion (a standard OpenAI API policy). Our own suggestion service does not store your requests. See OpenAI's privacy policy.
To keep these features from being abused, the app attaches an anonymous Apple App Attest token that proves the request comes from a genuine copy of MealTag. It carries no personal data and does not identify you.
5. Barcode and Food Searches
Barcode and food searches are sent to Open Food Facts and the USDA FoodData Central database to look up nutrition information. These lookups contain the barcode or search text only.
A barcode or a search term identifies a food item, not a person. No personal information (name, email, Apple ID, device identifier, or location) is included in these requests. See Open Food Facts terms and USDA FoodData Central.
6. Subscriptions
MealTag+ is an optional auto-renewing subscription purchased through Apple. Payment, renewal, and cancellation are handled entirely by Apple — MealTag never sees your payment details, and there is no MealTag account attached to your purchase. Manage or cancel anytime in Settings → Apple Account → Subscriptions.
7. What MealTag Does NOT Do
- No advertising — no ad SDKs, no tracking, no data brokers.
- No selling or sharing of personal data — we don't keep your personal data on our servers to sell.
- No user accounts, so there is no profile of you to breach.
- Apple Health data is never used for marketing or shared with third parties.
8. Notifications
Meal reminders are scheduled locally on your device. Nothing about your notifications leaves your phone.
9. Deleting Your Data
Your data is yours to delete at any time:
- Delete individual meals or reset suggestion memory inside the app.
- Delete the app to remove all local data.
- To remove synced data from iCloud: iPhone Settings → [your name] → iCloud → Manage Account Storage → MealTag → Delete Data.
10. Children's Privacy
MealTag is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect personal information from children.
11. Changes to This Policy
If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted at this address with a new effective date.
12. Contact
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or how MealTag handles your information, please contact us:
Rocky River Software, LLC