What is Almendra Engine?

Almendra Engine builds a first 7-day menu from the energy and macronutrient targets you set for the patient. It’s a starting point: you review it and adjust it in the editor before sharing it.

Almendra Engine is in beta. Always review the menu before sending it, especially if the patient has severe allergies.

How to generate a plan

1. Create a meal plan for the patient.
2. Under How would you like to start?, choose Generate with Almendra Engine.
3. In Set the daily targets, enter the plan’s energy and macronutrients.
4. In Distribution by meal, choose how many meals each day has and how much of the energy goes to each. Almendra Engine uses the same distribution for every day.
5. Almendra Engine generates the week’s menu. Review it and change whatever you need: you can edit any food, or copy a day to the rest of the week from the day’s ⋯ menu.

It’s only available for patients aged 18 or over, and not for templates.

What it takes into account

• The targets and the distribution by meal you set in the plan: these matter most.
• Diet style on the record: vegan, vegetarian, pescetarian or ketogenic.
• Diet conditions: Lactose intolerant and Gluten intolerant.
• Allergies: the ones you tick in the allergen list on the record and the ones you type in Foods allergies. If you type a group, like “tree nuts” or “shellfish”, every food in that group is left out. See what counts as each allergy in How does Almendra check my patient’s allergies and tastes?.
• Unliked Foods: it leaves them out. This is how you exclude a specific ingredient.

What it doesn’t do

• It doesn’t use weight, height or activity level directly: it starts from the targets you set (you can calculate them in the targets step).
• It doesn’t use the patient’s Liked Foods.
• It has no settings for cuisine or simple recipes.
• It uses Almendra’s foods and recipes, not the ones you created. You can add yours afterwards in the editor.

Recipes and servings

The amounts and calories of each recipe in the plan are for one serving, the patient’s. If you open the recipe, you’ll see the full ingredient list for all its servings (for example, for 4 people).

Colours in the editor

When you review the plan, each food’s name is coloured according to the patient’s record: red if it clashes with an allergy or intolerance (ticked or typed), orange if it’s something they don’t like, and blue if it’s one of their liked foods.

Access

On the free plan you can generate your first plan for free for a real patient (not the sample patient). With a paid plan you can generate as many plans as you need.