Following on from the last blog post detailing the introduction of an AI Recipe Assistant, Mealeez has expanded its use and introduced a refreshed design as well as adding some new features.
Introducing Trending Recipes
The home screen has had its first real design change in over two years. Today’s New Recipe now shows prominently at the top, followed by a list of the most popular recipes over the last 7 days. Any recipe that makes this list will have a small “Trending” badge shown at the bottom left of the cover image.
Nutrition information for each recipe is now available to all users (previously only PLUS members could view this), using the UK’s Food Standard Agency’s “Traffic Light System” to visually indicate healthy levels of Fat, Saturated Fat, Sugar & Salt, similar to what you will find on food packaging.
Expanding “My Recipe Assistant”
The previous version of Mealeez (Android app version 1.8) introduced a Recipe Assistant to give you ideas on alternative ingredients in recipes. With version 1.9, there are now two ways to do this.
The first, is to tap the Assistant icon at the top right of a recipe. This will give details on each ingredient that has been flagged as potentially containing allergies.
The second way is to tap each individual ingredient in a recipe that has been marked in purple. These are ingredients Mealeez thinks you may need to avoid. This will provide greater detail on alternative ingredients compared to tapping on the Assistant icon.
By expanding the Recipe Assistant further and enhancing its capabilities, there is no longer the need to maintain a manually created database of alternative food items, allowing Mealeez to give a greater variety of ingredients and explaining in detail how this will impact the taste, texture and overall outcome of a recipe. For the first time, potentially every recipe on Mealeez can be created, no matter what foods you are allergic to.
Simplified Account Controls
To make Mealeez simpler to navigate, the account options and account screens have been completely redesigned. Both areas now give better explanations of what each area does and the account screen itself has improved feature groupings to reduce clutter and allow you to find what you need more quickly.
Share Allergy QR Code Feature
One of the benefits of a PLUS membership is the ability to share your allergy list with others – especially those that do not use Mealeez itself. The way this is done is by either presenting a QR code for someone to scan using their own device, or by sharing a clickable link that is shown directly beneath the QR code itself.
When the person views your allergy information, they will see a webpage that breaks down your allergies into main food groups, then food ingredients, then everything Mealeez contains in its large database that is linked to those ingredients.
There are a number of scenarios where this can be used. Maybe you are unsure what ingredients are in a restaurant menu and want your waiter to check with the kitchen. Perhaps one of your children is going on a school trip, or camping with Scouts, and they need a printed list of allergies to check against.
Each link is time limited to 5 minutes. After this time, if the link is clicked on or refreshed it becomes invalid, protecting your data.
More FREE Food Label Scans
One of the most popular features that Mealeez offers is the food label scanner. Mealeez currently offers 6 free scans a month, with the ability to keep topping this up by watching an advert (PLUS subscribers get unlimited scans, of course).
Today, Mealeez introduces even more free label scans. How? Well, every time you scan a label and it doesn’t find any unsuitable ingredients we’ll also throw some confetti in the air and celebrate with you by giving you that scan for free!
Website Updates
All of the features and changes mentioned in this post have also made their way to the website, including the refreshed design. That’s not all! Push notifications are now alive in the browser, meaning website users can keep up to date with the latest restaurant menus and get Today’s New Recipe notifications at 10am every morning. The ability to scan an image from your device has also been added.
And Finally…
One of our latest recipes to be added, are these delicious Vegan Mince Pies. Give them a go and remember to log in and rate them!