FAQ

Logging

Do I have to pick a time for each meal?
No. You pick the meal — breakfast, lunch, dinner or a snack — and the day groups around that. Vertree doesn’t care what the clock said.

I made a typo. Can I fix a meal after logging it?
Yes. Open the meal and tap its sentence to edit it; Vertree re-reads the sentence and updates the foods. If anything goes wrong on the re-read, your meal stays exactly as it was.

Can I add something to a meal I’ve already logged?
Yes. On the meal’s screen there’s an Add food field — type “edamame” and it joins the plate. Start typing and Vertree offers foods you’ve logged before, which add instantly.

How does it handle amounts? A slice of pizza isn’t a whole pie.
Say the amount the way you’d say it — “two slices of pizza”, “a big bowl of oatmeal”, “half a bagel” — and Vertree uses it. If you don’t say, it assumes an ordinary portion, and you can tap the food to change the quantity afterwards.

I logged “two bananas” and later “banana” came back as two.
That was a real bug, reported by a tester and fixed: foods now track their quantity separately, so “two bananas” is stored as two of one banana and “banana” later means one.

A meal won’t analyze. What’s wrong?
Usually the connection — the meal is analyzed on our side within a couple of seconds, and sometimes the answer doesn’t make it back to the phone on a weak network. Try again on a better connection; the meal is saved either way, and you can re-run it from its sentence.

Some days I don’t want to describe what I ate. Do I have to?
No. Meal Pass logs that a meal happened and asks nothing else. It still plants a tree, because showing up is the thing that counts.

Pull and the four words

What do Grounded, Tasty, Tempting and Irresistible actually mean?
They describe what the food does. Grounded: nothing pulls, and it fills you up. Tasty: real pleasure, still filling — a compliment. Tempting: a mix is active — it keeps calling you back or it’s easy to keep eating. Irresistible: more than one mix, or one very strong. The words are tappable in the app; tapping one shows exactly which mix is doing the pulling. The full story is on How Pull works.

What is “the line”, and what’s past it?
Each mix has two halves — fat + salt, say — and each half has a line from published research. A mix is active only when both halves are past their line. Being just under a line still counts a little, which is why the app sometimes says a mix is “about 40% active”.

Is a low Pull “good” and a high Pull “bad”?
Pull is information about the food, not a grade. Lower means less is pulling; higher means more is. Which you want on a given day is your call. A large plate of grounded food reads beautifully, and an Irresistible dessert on a birthday is a dessert on a birthday.

Why does something that seems healthy read Tempting?
Because pull and healthiness aren’t the same axis. Juice is fruit, and its added sugar pulls. Whole-grain crackers are whole grain, and refined-starch + salt is active in them. Coffee with whole milk and a sweetener can read differently from black coffee. Tap the word to see which mix is behind it — the answer is always specific.

Everything I eat seems to read in the 70s. Is the app being harsh?
No — it’s describing the food supply accurately. When researchers applied the same definition to the foods available in the US, most of them qualified. Seeing that is the point; what you do with it is yours.

Why is my meal’s Pull lower than one of the foods in it?
A meal’s Pull is the average of its foods, weighted by calories. A small rich sauce can’t sink a big plate of pasta and mince; a steak that carries most of the calories keeps the fries from dominating.

Can I hide the number?
Yes. Settings has a display preference that hides the Pull number and keeps the word and the tree’s color.

The grove

What does the tree’s color mean?
It follows the meal’s Pull: green when nothing pulls, warming toward amber and brown as the pull rises. Days you don’t log are gaps — nothing to catch up on.

Why does my grove look different from the screenshots?
The grove grows in stages. Early on, meals fill a small circle; once it’s full, the circle turns; after about a week of days it opens into the hillside. Yours is just younger.

I missed a few days. Did I lose anything?
No. There are no streaks. The gap is a gap, and the next meal plants a tree like any other.

Pins and plans

Where do my pinned meals go?
Pinned meals appear as suggestions when you start typing a new meal — the ones you eat at that time of day come first — and one tap logs them again. You can rename a pin on its screen.

Can I plan a meal for later — meal prep for tomorrow?
Not yet. Today Plan shows you a plate’s pull before you eat it, and Pin saves a meal so it’s one tap to log again. Neither attaches to a future date. It’s a request we’ve heard, and it’s on the list.

What does “Ground it” do?
It asks for two or three ways to lower a plate’s pull without ruining the dish, each checked against the real formula before it’s shown. It’s a button you tap, never advice that arrives on its own.

Sync, account and privacy

Does it work offline?
Yes for reading and for logging; a new meal is analyzed once you’re back online, and it stays visible meanwhile.

Can I use it on two devices?
Yes. Sign in with the same Apple ID and your log syncs.

What do you do with my data?
Your meals are yours. Vertree uses your meal descriptions to work out the foods and to run the app, and nothing else; there are no ads and nothing is sold. The privacy policy says exactly what is stored and where.

How do I delete my account?
Email support@vertree.io from the address on your account and we delete it, along with your meals.

Getting in touch

How do I report a bug or ask for something?
The megaphone in the app sends it straight to us, with an optional screenshot. Or email support@vertree.io.