How do I log food in Base?

Tap the plus button in the centre of the tab bar. It opens the logging sheet at the current hour, over whatever screen you were on. Add foods from Search, a saved meal, a barcode, an AI photo scan or Quick Add — they land on a plate rather than in your log — then press Log to commit the whole batch at once.

A staging area. Foods you add sit on the plate, and the day's macro gauges at the top of the sheet include them while you build the meal. Nothing is written to your log until you press the Log button. This is what lets you assemble a multi-item meal, see where it puts you for the day, adjust a portion, and only then commit.

How do I change a serving size?

Tap the food rather than its plus button, and the detail view opens with an amount control at the bottom. It opens a purpose-built keypad where the unit is part of the same decision as the number, so you can switch between servings, grams, ounces and named portions like cup or slice without dismissing a keyboard.

Can I log food for a previous day?

Yes. Use the day scrubber at the top of the Food Log to move to the day you want, then tap the plus on any hour row. The logging sheet opens on that date and hour. Every hour from 6am to 11pm is always shown so there is always a slot to tap, plus any hour outside that window that already has something in it.

Why is my search not finding a food?

Search covers your own foods plus a large offline food directory, and it queries Open Food Facts in the background for branded products. If nothing matches, Quick Add is the intended fallback — enter the calories and macros directly, and it lands on the plate like anything else.

How to Log Food in Base

Why there is a plate

Most food loggers write each tap straight to the log. That makes every correction a delete, and it means you find out what a meal did to your day only after you have committed it.

The plate is a staging step. You add three or four things, watch the day's gauges move, notice that the meal puts you 400 over, drop the rice to half a serving, and then commit. That is the only moment where the answer can still change what you eat.

The logging sheet. The four gauges along the top include what is staged but not yet logged, so the question they answer is "where does this put me" rather than "where was I".

The five ways onto the plate

The tab strip across the sheet has five entries. Two of them push a full-screen flow; three are in-panel tabs.

Entry	Use it for
Scan	A packaged product with a barcode
Search	Anything by name, plus your favourites and pinned meals
Meal	Saved meals, and turning the current plate into one
Quick Add	Something not in any database — enter macros directly
AI Scan	A plate of food, photographed

Search

With an empty query, Search is a browse view rather than a blank box: pinned meal groups first, then a horizontal strip of favourites, then your most recent foods. That ordering is deliberate — the meals you actually eat are one tap from the moment the sheet opens.

Type, and it becomes two sections: Common and Branded. Common is whole foods and your own entries; Branded is packaged products. Open Food Facts is queried in the background after a short pause and its results merge in, with the status stated ("Looking up more brands…") rather than the list silently changing under you.

Autocorrect is deliberately off on that field. iOS autocorrect mangles food words into English ones and fights what you typed; Base does its own spelling repair instead, and it corrects toward the foods already in your directory — which is what makes it work on a personal log.

Quick Add

The fallback, and not a lesser one. Enter energy, protein, fat and carbohydrate, give it a name, and it goes on the plate like anything else. If you enter macros but no calories, a tappable line offers the computed figure from 4/9/4.

Setting the amount

Tap the row rather than its plus button and the detail view opens.

This is where the portion is decided, and it is worth using rather than accepting one serving. The view shows the item's calories, its three macros with each one's share of the item's energy, and — the reason the screen exists — Impact on Targets: four rings showing this food as a percentage of today's calories, protein, fat and carbohydrate.

A raw macro list makes you do the division. Eighteen percent of today's protein is the number that actually changes whether you eat it.

The amount control at the bottom opens a purpose-built keypad. Grams and ounces appear only when the food declares a serving weight, because offering a conversion the app cannot actually do would be worse than not offering one. Named portions from the food directory — cup, medium, slice, tablespoon — appear as chips.

Every number on the screen tracks the amount live. Typing 2 moves the calories, the split, the rings and the bars in the same frame.

Assembled meals and add-ons

A saved meal built from parts shows those parts under What's In It, scaled with the amount.

Optional add-ons appear separately under Options as toggles, and they are not in the meal's stored calories until ticked. Ticking one moves every number at once and appends to the name — so it logs as "Burrito Bowl + Chips" rather than as a bowl with 215 unexplained extra calories.

Add-ons always start unticked. The one thing this screen must never do is add chips because you had them last Tuesday.

Committing

The button at the bottom right reads Log Foods when the plate is empty and Log 3 when three things are on it. Pressing it writes every staged item to the hour the sheet was opened at, and closes.

Logging a past day, or a different hour

The Food Log's day scrubber (‹ Today ›) moves the date. Every hour from 6am to 11pm has a row with a plus, plus any hour outside that window that already has an entry — so a 2am meal is never hidden, and there is always a slot to tap.

Tapping the plus on an hour row opens the sheet at that date and hour.

Editing what you already logged

Long-press an entry on the Food Log to enter multi-select. From there you can Copy entries into today, or Remove them. Details in editing and deleting food entries.

Common mistakes

Tapping the plus on a row when you meant to set a portion. The plus stages one serving immediately. Tap the row itself to open the detail view first.

Logging the meal and then checking the day. The gauges at the top of the sheet already include the plate. Look before you commit, not after.

Ignoring Quick Add because it feels like cheating. A roughly-right Quick Add beats an unlogged meal by a wide margin. Adaptive maintenance is computed from your average logged intake, so a missing meal shifts your measured maintenance down permanently.

Building the same meal from scratch every day. Once you have assembled it, save it — see saving a meal. A saved meal is one tap.

Assuming an unticked add-on was included. It was not. That is the point of it being a toggle, and the name it logs under tells you which way it went.

Logging weekday food only. The most damaging pattern there is, because it biases your measured maintenance by exactly the amount the unlogged days differ.

What to do next

Log one complete day today, including drinks and cooking oil. Then open the Meal tab, name that plate, and save it — tomorrow the same day of food is one tap instead of twenty.