Settings

Settings is where you configure everything about your practice. Access it from Settings in the sidebar.

Practice profile

Your clinic or practice identity. What you see here depends on whether you're a solo practitioner or a clinic with a team.

Solo practitioners

A single form covers everything — your name, credentials, specializations, bio, contact, and address. This information appears on PDFs, invoices, and the client portal.

Clinics (2+ team members)

The settings page splits into three sections:

Clinic Information — your clinic's identity (name, specializations, bio, contact, address, hours). This is the org-level brand.

Client-Facing Branding — controls how your practice appears on PDFs, the client portal, and emails. See Branding mode below.

Your Profile — your individual professional identity (title, credentials, license, specializations, bio). Each team member fills in their own profile.

Branding mode

Controls which identity appears on client-facing materials:

Practitioner visibility controls

When the branding mode includes practitioner information, you can control exactly what clients see:

Practitioner profiles

Each clinical team member (owner, lead dietitian, dietitian, intern) has their own professional profile:

• Title — Dr., Dt., Mr., Ms., Prof.
• Display name — override for how their name appears (optional)
• Credentials — RD, CDE, CNSC, MSc Nutrition, etc.
• License number — registration/license number
• Specializations — individual areas of expertise
• Bio — personal about section shown to their clients
• Signature — individual signature image for PDFs

Profiles are edited from Settings → Practice Profile → Your Profile (for your own) or Settings → Team → Edit Profile (admin editing a team member's profile).

Practice defaults

Configure default units and targets that apply to all new clients. Individual clients can override these in their profile.

Food database

Customize how the food database works for your practice — portion sizes, visibility, exchange lists, alerts, and cooking adjustments. Access from Settings → Food Database.

This is a tabbed settings page with five sections:

For full details on each section, see Food Database → Practice-level controls.

Food database

Customize how the food database works for your practice — portion sizes, visibility, exchange lists, allergen policies, and cooking adjustments. Access from Settings → Food Database.

This is a comprehensive configuration module with 5 sub-tabs:

For full documentation on each sub-tab, see Food Database → Practice-level controls.

Meal structure

Customize the default meal slots for new plans:

You can also add custom slots like "Pre-Workout", "Post-Workout", or "Midnight Snack".

Food database

Customize how the food database works for your practice. Access from Settings → Food Database.

Portions & measures

Override platform portion sizes to match your practice. Every dietitian uses different katori sizes, roti weights, and serving standards — configure yours once and it applies everywhere.

Standard portion overrides — change the gram weight of any platform portion:

Overrides apply to all new meal plans. Existing plans keep their saved gram weights.

Custom portions — create portions specific to your practice:

• "1 palm (protein)" = 85g — for meat/fish categories
• "1 fist (veggies)" = 80g — for vegetables
• "1 steel glass" = 250g — for beverages
• "1 small bowl" = 120g — for pulses/dal

Assign custom portions to specific food categories so they only appear for relevant foods. Set a default portion per category.

Visibility & filters

Control which foods appear in search results across your practice:

Dietary type filter — hide food types that don't apply to your practice. A vegetarian practice can hide all non-veg foods from search.

Database selection — choose which databases are active (IFCT, INDB, USDA, Custom). Disable databases you don't use. You can only activate databases your plan includes; locked sources stay preview-only until you upgrade.

Hidden categories — hide entire food categories (e.g., alcoholic beverages, infant foods, supplements).

Display preferences:

These settings control how food portions and gram weights are displayed across the meal plan builder, client portal, and PDF exports — ensuring consistent formatting everywhere.

Exchange lists

Built-in ICMR-NIN 2024 food exchange system. One click loads the 9 standard exchange groups:

Create custom exchange groups for specialized protocols. Map foods to groups with grams-per-exchange values. Exchange counts appear alongside portions in the meal plan builder.

Alerts & restrictions

Set practice-level food policies that auto-warn or block foods when adding them to meal plans:

Trigger types:

• Allergen tag — warn/block when food has specific allergen tags (nuts, gluten, dairy, soy, egg, fish, shellfish)
• Nutrient threshold — warn when a nutrient exceeds a value per 100g (e.g., potassium > 300mg for renal patients)
• Dietary type — block non-veg foods for vegetarian clients
• Food category — restrict entire categories

Action types:

• Warn — shows a dismissible warning, practitioner can add anyway
• Block — prevents the food from being added
• Note — shows an info notice (no action required)

Scoping — policies can apply to all clients, or only to clients with specific goals (diabetes, renal, pregnancy) or tags (nut-allergy, celiac, vegetarian).

Quick templates — one-click setup for common policies: Renal (high potassium), Nut Allergy, Gluten Free, Diabetes (high sugar), Pregnancy (caffeine), Vegetarian (non-veg block).

Cooking factors

Configure how food weight and nutrients change with cooking methods. Platform defaults are based on USDA Retention Factor Release 6 and Indian cooking consensus.

Yield factors — how weight changes after cooking:

• Rice (boiled): ×2.5 — 100g raw becomes 250g cooked
• Dal (pressure cooked): ×2.2 — 100g raw becomes 220g cooked
• Roti (dry roasted): ×0.85 — 30g flour becomes ~25g roti
• Deep fried: ×0.7 — significant water loss

Nutrient retention — fraction of nutrient retained:

• Deep frying: fat ×1.5 (absorption), protein ×0.9 (slight loss)
• Boiling: energy ×1.0 (no change), fiber ×0.95 (minimal loss)
• Grilling: fat ×0.8 (drips off), protein ×0.95

Available cooking methods: Raw, Boiled, Pressure Cooked, Steamed, Shallow Fried, Deep Fried, Dry Roasted, Grilled, Baked, Sautéed, Tempered (Tadka).

Service packages

Define the packages you offer to clients. See Client Billing for full details.

Billing & tax

Configure your billing defaults for GST-compliant invoicing:

Payment collection details

Configure your payment details so clients know how to pay:

Export & branding

Control how your PDF exports look — logo, colors, contact info, signature, section visibility, and layout options.

Default nutrient visibility

Set which nutrients are shown to clients by default across all PDFs and the portal. Click any nutrient pill to toggle it off. All five nutrients (calories, protein, carbs, fat, fiber) are visible by default.

This is the practice-level default — the lowest priority in the cascade. Per-client and per-plan overrides take priority when set.

Notifications

Configure which emails MealStack sends:

Client Portal

Customize how your client portal looks and feels. Access from Settings → Client Portal.

Appearance

Configure the portal's visual identity:

Home page

Default portal features

Set org-level defaults for the 14 feature toggles. When you enable portal for a new client, these defaults are applied. Existing clients keep their current settings.

Intake form steps

Choose which sections appear in the client intake form. Toggle individual steps on or off — "About You" is always required. Changes apply to new intake form links only.

Push notifications

Control which push notifications are sent to clients who install the portal as an app:

Footer & branding

Preview

The settings page includes an inline preview showing how the portal header, calorie ring, and bottom navigation look with your chosen colors. Updates in real-time as you change settings.

Team

Manage your practice team. See Team Management for full details.

AI Assistant

Configure AI-powered features for your practice. Access from Settings → AI Assistant.

Enabling AI

AI must be enabled at the organization level before any practitioner can use it. This is a one-time consent step for DPDP compliance.

When enabled, AI can:

• Generate meal plans from client profiles
• Suggest foods based on nutrient gaps
• Swap items with context-aware alternatives
• Generate complete recipes with ingredients and steps

Food database preference

Select which food databases AI should prefer when matching food names. Indian dietitians should select IFCT and INDB for culturally relevant results.

Usage tracking

View your monthly AI credit usage:

Food suggestions and swap suggestions are always free — they don't consume credits. Only generation actions (day generation, recipe generation, label scanning) use credits.

Bonus credit packs

Purchase additional credits if you exceed your monthly allowance:

Bonus credits are valid for 12 months and are used automatically when your plan allowance runs out.

Food name mappings

View and customize how AI food names map to your food database. Platform-level mappings cover common foods (113+ entries). You can add org-level overrides for foods specific to your practice.

AI disclaimer in exports

Toggle whether MealStack automatically adds an AI disclaimer to PDF exports when a plan contains AI-generated items. Enabled by default. When on, the text "Some items in this plan were generated with AI assistance" is appended to the PDF footer. Turn it off if you prefer not to show this to clients.

Privacy

• Client names and contact info are never sent to AI
• All AI outputs are drafts — practitioners review before applying
• Data is processed with zero retention
• You can disable AI anytime from this settings page

Subscription billing

Manage your MealStack subscription:

• Current plan — view plan name, usage bars (clients, team members, storage), billing cycle, and renewal date
• Trial status — days remaining if on a trial, with upgrade prompt
• Cancel / reactivate — cancel at end of billing period (keeps access until then) or reactivate a pending cancellation
• Billing history — download past invoices as PDF
• Payment method — update your card/UPI via Razorpay
• Billing details — legal entity name, GSTIN, PAN, billing address (shown on your subscription invoices from Workfile)
• Discount codes — enter a promo code during upgrade checkout