Questions
Straight answers
Everything people ask, including the ones where the honest answer is “software cannot know that”. Each group links to the page it came from.
About AIM
- Is AIM free?
- Yes. AIM is free to download and use, with no subscription and no paywalled nutrients. You can use it without an account; signing in only matters if you want your log on more than one device.
- What AI model does AIM use?
- A frontier multimodal reasoning model — the same class of system used for hard general-purpose work — rather than a small image classifier trained on a fixed list of dishes, or a lookup against a food database. It is given room to think before it answers rather than being run at the cheapest, fastest setting, because estimating a portion from a photograph is a judgment call. That costs a few seconds per meal and is what lets it separate a plate into its components instead of returning one coarse total.
- How accurate is tracking macros from a photo?
- For calories and macronutrients, an image plus a short description lands in the same range as a person estimating portions by hand — and it takes seconds instead of minutes. AIM prints the assumptions it made under every meal so you can correct the one that is wrong, and every number is editable by hand. Micronutrient estimates carry more uncertainty because vitamin and mineral content varies with soil, cultivar and cooking.
- Can AIM track water from food?
- Yes, and it is one of the main reasons AIM exists. Water is a nutrient in the same registry as protein, estimated in milliliters from each meal including the water in the food itself — the broth in a soup, the moisture in chicken, the water rice absorbs while cooking. Food supplies roughly 20–30% of most people's daily water, which glass-counting trackers miss entirely.
- Can I track a nutrient like folic acid or iodine?
- Yes. Fourteen nutrients ship as standard — calories, protein, carbs, fat, fiber, sugar, saturated fat, sodium, cholesterol, potassium, calcium, iron, vitamin C and water. Beyond those you can add a custom metric with its own name, unit and daily or weekly goal, and it is estimated on every meal from then on.
- Can I set a limit instead of a goal?
- Yes. Any nutrient or custom metric can be a cap — a number to stay under rather than reach. Cap added sugar at 25 g a day, sodium, saturated fat, alcohol units a week, or sweetened drinks as a simple count. The meal that takes you over is flagged when you log it, with the amount that did it.
- Can an app really detect heavy metals or carcinogens in food?
- No app can measure contamination from a photograph — that is a laboratory assay, and it varies between batches of the same product. What AIM does is flag when a food falls into a category with a documented history, such as cadmium in cocoa, inorganic arsenic in rice or lead in some protein powders, with one plain sentence explaining why. It never prints a number for a contaminant, because any number would be invented.
- Can I get alerts for ingredients I want to avoid?
- Yes. Add your own watch terms — an additive, a sweetener, an oil, an allergen — and AIM flags a meal when one appears, marked as your own term rather than general advice.
- Does AIM work with Apple Health?
- Yes, in both directions. AIM reads active energy so exercise is reflected in your day, and writes energy and macros back to Health for your other apps. Permissions are granted per data type in Apple's Health app and can be revoked at any time.
- Do my food photos get stored or used to train AI?
- Photos and descriptions are sent to an AI provider to identify what you ate. They are not used to train models, and you can delete any entry — or your whole account and everything in it — from inside the app. The privacy policy sets out exactly what is sent, to whom and for how long it is kept.
- What devices does AIM run on?
- AIM is an iPhone app and runs on iOS. It is not built for iPad, and there is no Android version yet.
Photo logging
Read the full page →- How accurate is logging food from a photo?
- For calories and macronutrients it lands in the same range as a person estimating portions by hand, and it takes seconds rather than minutes. The printed assumptions tell you which input to correct, and every number is editable. Micronutrient estimates carry more uncertainty, because vitamin and mineral content varies with soil, cultivar, storage and cooking in ways no photograph contains.
- What kind of AI does AIM use to identify food?
- A frontier multimodal reasoning model — the same class of system used for hard general-purpose work — rather than a small image classifier trained on a fixed list of dishes, or a lookup against a food database. It is given room to think before answering rather than run at the cheapest setting, because estimating a portion from a photograph is a judgment call. That costs a few seconds and is what lets it separate a plate into its components instead of returning one coarse total.
- Does it work on home-cooked food?
- Yes — and it is where photo logging helps most, because a home-cooked meal is the case a food database handles worst. AIM breaks the plate into ingredients and estimates each one, rather than forcing it into a single database row.
- Do I need an account to log a meal?
- No. AIM works without an account. Signing in only matters if you want your log on more than one device.
Water from food
Read the full page →- Does food count as water intake?
- Yes. Food typically supplies 20–30% of daily water intake, and that water is absorbed the same way water from a glass is. Watermelon, cucumber, yogurt, soup and most cooked grains are majority water by weight.
- Do coffee and tea count?
- Yes. At ordinary intakes the diuretic effect of caffeine does not exceed the fluid in the drink, so a cup of coffee is a net positive for hydration.
- Can I still log a glass of water?
- Yes — say it in the chat and it goes into the same water total as the water from your food. AIM does not keep two separate hydration numbers.
Custom nutrients
Read the full page →- Can I track folic acid in a macro tracker?
- In most macro trackers, no — they expose calories and the three macros and little else. AIM lets you add any nutrient as a custom metric with its own unit and daily or weekly goal, folate included.
- How many nutrients can I add?
- There is no fixed limit. What keeps it manageable is that only the metrics you pin appear on your meal cards; everything else is recorded and charted without cluttering the day.
- What units are supported?
- Micrograms, milligrams, grams and milliliters, plus a plain count for things that are not nutrients at all — sweetened drinks a week, alcohol units, takeaway meals.
Caps and alerts
Read the full page →- How do I limit how much soda I drink?
- Set a cap rather than a goal — either added sugar in grams, or a custom metric counting sweetened drinks with a weekly limit. AIM warns you at the meal that takes you past it.
- What is a reasonable daily sugar limit?
- The WHO recommends keeping free sugars under 10% of energy intake and suggests a further reduction to 5% for additional benefit. On a 2,000 kcal day that is 50 g and 25 g respectively. A single 355 ml can of regular soda is about 39 g.
- Can a cap be weekly rather than daily?
- Yes, per metric. Weekly caps fit things consumed in a weekly rhythm — alcohol, takeaways, sweetened drinks — where a daily cap is either unrealistic or never triggers.
Ingredient flags
Read the full page →- Can an app detect heavy metals in food from a photo?
- No. Heavy metal content is a laboratory measurement and varies between batches of the same product. What software can do is recognize that a food category has a documented contamination history and say so, with the reason attached.
- Which foods are commonly tested for heavy metals?
- Consumer testing has repeatedly found cadmium and lead in cocoa and dark chocolate, inorganic arsenic in rice and rice-based products, lead in some protein powders and spices, and methylmercury in swordfish, king mackerel, shark and bigeye tuna.
- Can I get alerts for ingredients I want to avoid?
- Yes. Add your own watch terms and AIM flags a meal when one appears, marked as your own term rather than general advice.
Corrections
Read the full page →- What happens if I correct a meal twice?
- Each correction amends the same entry. You end up with one meal carrying your latest numbers, not a trail of duplicates.
- Can I change the meal type or time after logging?
- Yes. Breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack are switchable on the entry, and so is the time — including logging something you ate yesterday.
- Do manual edits get overwritten later?
- No. Totals are derived from the estimate with your overrides laid on top, so a manual value survives anything recomputed around it.
Apple Health
Read the full page →- Does AIM write calories to Apple Health?
- Yes, if you turn writing on. Energy and macros from the meals you log are written to Health so your other apps can read them.
- AIM isn't reading my workouts — why?
- Check Health → Sharing → Apps → AIM and make sure Active Energy is allowed. iOS grants Health permissions per data type, so it is common for one to be off while the rest are on.
- Is my health data sent to the AI?
- No. Apple Health data is never sent to the AI provider. Only the photo or description of the meal you are logging is.
Calories
Read the full page →- How accurate is estimating calories from a photo?
- It lands in the range people achieve estimating portions by hand, and takes seconds instead of minutes. AIM prints its assumptions under each meal so you can correct the one that is wrong, and every number is editable.
- Does exercise change my calorie goal?
- AIM reads active energy from Apple Health, so exercise is reflected in your day rather than leaving your intake looking excessive.
Protein
Read the full page →- How much protein do I need a day?
- Commonly cited ranges run from about 0.8 g per kg of body weight for sedentary adults to 1.6–2.2 g per kg for people training for strength or in a calorie deficit. AIM's 140 g default is a placeholder — set yours from your own weight and training.
- Can I ask how much protein I have left today?
- Yes. Ask in the chat and AIM answers from today's log without writing anything to it.
Carbs
Read the full page →- Does AIM track net carbs?
- It tracks total carbohydrate and fiber separately on every meal, so net carbs is the subtraction of two numbers you already have. You can also add net carbs as a custom metric with its own goal.
- Does AIM count cooking oil?
- It assumes a typical preparation and prints that assumption. If the assumption is wrong, say so — “fried in butter”, “no oil” — and it revises the meal.
Fiber
Read the full page →- How much fiber should I eat a day?
- Common guidance is about 25 g a day for women and 38 g for men, or roughly 14 g per 1,000 kcal. AIM defaults to 30 g and you can change it.
Sugar
Read the full page →- What is a reasonable daily sugar limit?
- The WHO recommends keeping free sugars under 10% of energy intake, with a further reduction to 5% for additional benefit — 50 g and 25 g respectively on a 2,000 kcal day.
- Can I track added sugar separately from total sugar?
- Yes. The standard metric is total sugars; add “added sugar” as a custom metric with its own cap if that is the number you care about.
Saturated fat
Read the full page →- How much saturated fat per day?
- Nutrition labels use a 20 g daily value, and guidance commonly caps it at about 10% of energy intake — roughly 22 g on a 2,000 kcal day. AIM defaults to 22 g as a cap.
Sodium
Read the full page →- What is the daily sodium limit?
- Nutrition labels use 2,300 mg a day, which is AIM's default cap. The American Heart Association suggests an ideal limit of 1,500 mg for many adults.
- Why is my sodium high when I don't add salt?
- Because most sodium arrives in packaged and restaurant food rather than from the salt shaker — bread, sauces, soups, deli meat and cheese are the usual sources.
Cholesterol
Read the full page →- Should I still limit dietary cholesterol?
- Guidance has moved. The 2015 US Dietary Guidelines removed the specific 300 mg limit while still advising that intake be kept as low as practical, and current advice emphasises saturated fat more. Follow your clinician's advice on your own numbers — AIM is not medical advice.
Potassium
Read the full page →- Why track potassium?
- Higher potassium intake is associated with lower blood pressure, and most people fall short of the 3,400 mg daily value. It is also absent from most macro trackers, so it is a common reason to add a custom metric elsewhere.
Calcium
Read the full page →- How do I track calcium on a dairy-free diet?
- Say whether the plant milk or tofu was fortified or calcium-set when you log it. Fortification is the single biggest factor and it cannot be seen in a photo.
- Does AIM distinguish haem from non-haem iron?
- The standard metric is total iron. If absorption matters to you, add haem iron as a custom metric, and note that vitamin C at the same meal improves non-haem absorption.
Vitamin C
Read the full page →- Does cooking destroy vitamin C?
- It reduces it substantially. Vitamin C degrades with heat, light and time, and leaches into cooking water — boiled vegetables can lose a large fraction of what they started with. Steaming and raw preparations retain more.
Water
Read the full page →- Does the water in food count toward hydration?
- Yes. Food typically supplies 20–30% of daily water intake, and it is absorbed the same way water from a glass is.
- Can I still log drinks?
- Yes — say “large glass of water” and it goes into the same total. AIM does not keep two separate hydration numbers.
Still stuck? Support has the how-to answers, and support@aimacros.app reaches a person.
A food diary you might actually keep
AIM is free on iPhone. Fourteen nutrients per meal, water counted from food, caps on anything you want to stay under.