MealTag Privacy Policy
Effective date:
The short version: Your food log belongs to you, stays on your devices and in your own iCloud, and is never sold, shared for advertising, or used to track you. MealTag has no user accounts and no analytics SDKs.
1. Overview
MealTag is built by Rocky River Software, LLC. MealTag is a barcode-based nutrition logger for iPhone and iPad.
Your food log belongs to you. It stays on your devices and in your own private iCloud, and it is never sold, shared for advertising, or used to track you. MealTag has no user accounts and no analytics SDKs.
2. What MealTag Stores, and Where
Your food log, goals, and preferences — the meals you log, your calorie and macro targets, and your dietary restrictions, allergies, disliked foods, and cuisine preferences — are stored on your device and synced through your personal iCloud account via Apple's CloudKit.
Rocky River Software cannot read this data. It lives in your private iCloud database, protected by your Apple ID. See Apple's privacy policy.
Your Apple Health data (active energy, steps, workouts) is handled separately and only if you choose to connect it — see the next section.
3. Apple Health (HealthKit)
Health Data Disclosure
MealTag will not use or disclose health or fitness data obtained from Apple HealthKit to any third party for advertising, marketing, or other use-based data mining purposes, and will never sell it. Health data is read on demand, displayed in the app, and never stored on any server.
If you choose to connect Apple Health, MealTag reads your activity data (active energy, steps, and workouts) on demand to adjust your daily guidance. It is displayed in the app and factored into your remaining calorie budget.
MealTag never writes to Apple Health and never stores your Health data on any server.
You can revoke MealTag's access to Apple Health at any time in Settings > Health > Data Access & Devices > MealTag on your iPhone.
4. AI Features and What Leaves Your Device
When you ask for AI meal suggestions, MealTag sends a structured summary to our suggestion service, which forwards it to OpenAI to generate meal ideas. That summary contains only what is needed for a useful suggestion:
- Remaining calories, protein, carbs, fat, and fiber for the day
- Your goal type and coaching style (e.g., "Lose weight", "Flexible")
- Status flags (e.g., "Low protein")
- Dietary restrictions, allergies, disliked foods, and preferred cuisines
- Titles of suggestions you previously accepted or rejected
What this summary does not contain
Your name, email, location, identifiers, your food log history, or raw Apple Health data. Requests are not stored by our suggestion service.
Data submitted through OpenAI's API is not used to train OpenAI models, and we have configured zero data retention where available. See OpenAI's privacy policy.
5. Barcode and Food Searches
Barcode and food searches are sent to Open Food Facts and the USDA FoodData Central database to look up nutrition information. These lookups contain the barcode or search text only.
A barcode or a search term identifies a food item, not a person. No personal information (name, email, Apple ID, device identifier, or location) is included in these requests. See Open Food Facts terms and USDA FoodData Central.
6. What MealTag Does NOT Do
- No advertising — no ad SDKs, no tracking, no data brokers.
- No selling or sharing of personal data — there is nothing on our servers to sell.
- No user accounts, so there is no profile of you to breach.
- Apple Health data is never used for marketing or shared with third parties.
7. Notifications
Meal reminders are scheduled locally on your device. Nothing about your notifications leaves your phone.
8. Deleting Your Data
Your data is yours to delete at any time:
- Delete individual meals or reset suggestion memory inside the app.
- Delete the app to remove all local data.
- To remove synced data from iCloud: iPhone Settings → [your name] → iCloud → Manage Account Storage → MealTag → Delete Data.
9. Children's Privacy
MealTag is not directed at children under 13 and does not knowingly collect personal information from children.
10. Changes to This Policy
If this policy changes, the updated version will be posted at this address with a new effective date.
11. Contact
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy or how MealTag handles your information, please contact us:
Rocky River Software, LLC