# How Splot works

> The few ideas behind Splot, defined: the journal, meals, foods, recipes, plans, totals, targets and estimates.

Splot is a food journal. It keeps an accurate record of what you eat and plan; you, or an assistant you connect, do the thinking. These are the ideas it is built on.

## The journal

Your journal is a timeline. Every meal you log or plan is an entry on it, placed at the moment it was eaten, or will be, and on that day in the timezone it was eaten in. The same journal is shown in the app, read and written by connected assistants, and reached through the [Splot API](https://splot.health/docs/api).

## Meals and items

A **meal** is one entry: a name, a time, optional photos and notes, and one or more **items**. Each item is one food and the portion eaten, such as 150 g of Greek yogurt. A dish is one item: a recipe is never split back into its ingredients.

## Eaten and planned

A meal is either **eaten** (logged) or **planned**. Planned meals sit in the journal beside eaten ones but don't count towards the day's totals. Marking a plan as eaten turns it into an eaten meal, and **Mark as not eaten** turns it back.

## Foods

A **food** is anything you can log, with its nutrition and its portions. Foods come from **Common foods**, the **Splot database**, **Open Food Facts**, or **My foods**, your own. Nutrition is given per 100 g, per 100 ml or per serving, and portions name usual amounts, such as a slice or a pack.

Foods change over time, but a meal keeps the food exactly as it was when you logged it, so editing or deleting a food never changes your past meals.

## Recipes

A **recipe** is a food made of other foods, with servings and optional steps. Its nutrition is added up from its ingredients, per serving, and you log it in servings.

## Totals

The day's **totals** add up the calories, protein, carbs and fat of the meals you ate that day. Splot works them out from foods and portions; nobody types totals.

## Unknown values

When a food doesn't list a nutrient, Splot shows it as unknown (**—**), never as zero. A meal or day missing some values is marked **Incomplete**, and its totals count only what is known.

## Estimates

An **estimate** is a food whose nutrition was estimated rather than read from a label or a database, such as a meal an assistant estimated from a photo. Estimates are marked **≈**. Splot itself never estimates.

## Targets

**Targets** are your daily calories, protein, carbs and fat. They change over time in periods: each change applies from a day onward, for one day, or until a date, and earlier days keep theirs. Hidden targets still apply.

## Units

Splot stores grams, millilitres and kilocalories, and shows portions and weights in your **Units**: Metric, US or UK.