Set your diet and allergies

RecipeClip cannot tell you a recipe is safe. To start, open Settings › Diet & allergens and tick your allergens. Recipes can then flag allergens, your diet and foods you dislike when their ingredient or step text mentions them. Setting up your profile is free on every plan. Generate week, which also uses it, is a Pro feature.

Add your allergies, diet and dislikes#

1. 1

   Open Settings and find Diet & allergens

   On a phoneOn a computer

   Tap your initial, or your Google photo if you signed in with Google, at the top right. Settings opens straight away. The card is near the bottom, just above Family plan. The card’s grey intro mentions meal plans; today that means Generate week.

   

   Click the round button with your initial or Google photo at the top right, then Settings, then Diet & allergens in the list on the left. The page scrolls to the card, though the list’s highlight may stay on another item.

   

   Food interests is a different card

   Higher up, Food interests has chips that look like diets: Vegetarian, Vegan, Gluten-free, Dairy-free and more. They are the same chips you picked at sign-up under “How you eat”. They only change the recipes RecipeClip suggests, and never set a diet or an allergen or make a warning appear. For gluten or milk, tick it under Allergens in the Diet & allergens card.

   You'll see: A card titled Diet & allergens shows the diet buttons, a list of allergens and a box for dislikes.

2. 2

   Choose your diet

   Use the buttons under Diet & allergens: No specific diet, Vegetarian, Vegan, Pescatarian and Other. Other opens a box with the grey hint e.g. keto, low FODMAP. Type up to 60 characters there. Your household sees that text under your name, but recipe warnings do not check against it.

   

   You'll see: The button you press turns dark. Only one can be chosen.

3. 3

   Tick your allergens

   There are ten allergens: milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soy, sesame and gluten. Tick every one that applies to you. For a shellfish allergy, tick shellfish. For a nut allergy, tick tree nuts, peanuts or both. For coeliac (celiac) disease, tick gluten. If your allergen is not in the list, see My allergy is not one of the ten.

   

   You'll see: Each ticked box turns green with a check mark.

4. 4

   Add foods you dislike

   Dislikes are foods you would rather avoid. Type each one as a tag, then press Add or the Enter key.

   • Type each food once, as pea or peas. A plural tag also finds the plain singular, so peas finds pea and strawberries finds strawberry. A tag also finds forms with an ending, so roast finds roasted and pepper finds peppered. The singular made from a plural tag does not get those endings.
   • A plural tag skips a few compounds that name a different food. peppers does not flag black pepper, salt and pepper or green pepper, olives does not flag olive oil, and onions does not flag onion powder or a single green onion. onions still flags 2 green onions. chili powder and apple cider are skipped the same way. Type the singular, such as pepper, if you want those flagged too.
   • A tag matches whole words only: olive flags olive oil, but pea does not flag chickpeas or peanut.
   • You can keep up to 20 tags of 40 characters. Press the small × on a tag to remove it. The Household page shows only your first 3, so put the most important first.

   

   You'll see: Each one appears as a small tag under the box.

5. 5

   Press Save diet profile

   Nothing in this card is stored until you press its own save button. Messages you may see:

   • Couldn’t load your saved diet profile — saving now could overwrite it. Press Try again. The save button stays off until it loads.
   • Couldn’t save your diet profile. Try again. Press the button again.
   • Couldn’t be saved yet — this feature is still rolling out. Nothing was stored. The feature is not switched on yet. The card then keeps a banner: This feature is still rolling out — nothing you set here is stored yet. Other failed saves can show the server’s own message instead.

   

   You'll see: A message says Diet profile saved.

Allergen warnings on a recipe#

Open one of your own recipes from Recipes, or one shared with your household. If its ingredients or steps match your profile, a card appears by the ingredients. If a recipe has no ingredients or steps, nothing was read: add the ingredients with Edit. The lines come in this order:

• May contain soy — flagged for you is an allergen. Only an allergen makes the card red. A card with only diet or dislike lines is plain, with a small info icon. It says may because the match comes from words in the recipe, not from a lab.
• Labelled gluten-free — check the packaging (you): 1 cup gluten-free flour blend is a soft row in italics. It means the line carries a “free” label for your allergen, so it is not flagged as the allergen, and it is not called safe either. See Ingredients labelled free.
• Not vegetarian — you means the recipe breaks the diet you chose.
• Has olive — you dislike it is a dislike, in grey, and the quietest line.
• A grey Couldn’t fully check this recipe — always read labels. card means the AI check could not run and nothing else was flagged.
• Couldn’t check this recipe against your diet & allergen profile — try reloading the page. means your profile could not be reached. Reload the page.

Under the lines the card says Flagged from ingredient and step text — always check labels. A second AI check reads the same ingredient and step text, and a flag from either check is shown. The card does not show while you edit the recipe.

Ingredients labelled free#

A line such as 1 cup gluten-free flour blend does not flag gluten. It gets the soft row instead. These rules decide when:

• A “-free” label (gluten-free, nut-free, dairy-free, egg-free, soy-free and so on), or vegan or plant-based for milk and eggs, softens only its own allergen. It covers the first generic product after it, plus one more word such as blend, mix, pasta, flour, bread, breadcrumbs or spread.
• A label never softens a word that names the allergen itself: wheat, spelt, semolina, almond, cashew, whey, casein or egg yolk. Anything after then, but, with, into, in or a comma flags as usual.
• Chained labels work for each allergen: dairy-free, egg-free custard gets a soft row for milk and for eggs. A label only softens an allergen the line actually names: in gluten-free, dairy-free brioche, gluten gets a soft row, wheat still flags, and milk gets nothing because brioche is not a milk word.
• A gluten-free label never softens wheat. With a wheat allergy, gluten-free bread flags wheat as usual. The soft row is for a gluten (coeliac) profile without a wheat allergy.
• non-dairy, non-vegan, not vegan, free-range, free of and free from are not labels.

A label is only the maker’s claim. When a card has only soft rows, it is a plain grey card with a question mark, and its footer reads Read from ingredient and step text. A label is the maker’s claim, so check the packaging.

A card with only a diet line or a dislike line is plain too. Red is only for allergens.

Where the checks run, and where they never do#

On a page that is never checked, no card means nothing was checked. A planned meal that shows as No longer shared with your family cannot be opened or checked. A line under it says who to ask, such as Ask Sam Rivera to share it with the household, or Sam Rivera has left the household if the owner is gone. Ask them, remove the meal, or add the dish again from a recipe you can open.

For an Explore recipe, press Fork & Remix to save your own copy. The copy opens on its own page in your Recipes, and that page runs the check. On a Free account at its recipe limit, free up a spot or upgrade first. A public recipe’s share link forks fine. A private recipe cannot be forked, even if the owner approved you (Cannot fork a private recipe), and its /s/ or /u/ links are never checked: ask the owner for the recipe’s /recipe/ address to see its card, or type it in yourself with Type in a recipe. The AI Remix card on any recipe you own has buttons such as Gluten-Free and Dairy-Free. They ask the AI to rewrite the recipe. For those two goals only, RecipeClip then reads the result for that one allergen, not your profile: a line that still matches shows Still lists gluten: 2 cups flour. Check before you cook., a match in the steps shows Still mentions gluten in the steps, and a labelled line gets a soft Labelled gluten-free — check the packaging note. Those two goals also carry This is an AI rewrite. Every other goal, such as Vegan, is not checked for allergens at all and shows none of this. No warning does not make it safe. See Save your own copy. Explore’s Vegan or Gluten-free filters go by recipe labels, not by a check: see the filters.

How Generate week uses your profile#

Generate week (Pro) reads your profile and tries to leave out recipes that list one of your allergens: yours on Mine, everyone’s on Family. Its Nut-free, Gluten-free and Dairy-free chips count too: they drop recipes like an allergen in Settings does, and in the refill as well. Nut-free means tree nuts and peanuts. Gluten-free means gluten and wheat, so a recipe with gluten-free flour blend is dropped while that chip is on. Only a gluten allergy in Settings, without wheat, keeps such a recipe and adds a soft note. Still tick the allergen in Settings, so every other page knows it. The rules and the note it shows when it drops a meal are in Plan a week with AI.

In a household#

Everyone in a household sees everyone else’s profile as small tags under their name on the Household page: red for an allergy, yellow for a diet, and up to three grey ones for dislikes, such as no pea. You can change only your own profile, in your own Settings. On a recipe, the card covers everyone who has set something, and names who each line is for.

Common questions#

Who can see my profile?#

You, and the people in your household. Someone outside your household cannot see it.

Do I need a paid plan?#

No. Setting your profile and the warning card are free. Only Generate week needs Pro, and a household member gets Pro while they are in the household.

My allergy is not one of the ten.#

There is no box for it, and the AI check never looks for it. You can type it as a dislike, such as mustard, but that only adds a grey line, Has mustard — you dislike it, when a recipe uses that word. A recipe that says only Dijon will not match mustard. Generate week avoids dislikes only where it can. For mustard, celery, sulphites or anything else not in the list, read every label. Coconut is deliberately not counted as a tree nut. For molluscs: the shellfish list includes mussels, clams, oysters, squid, octopus, cuttlefish, crayfish and escargot. Tick shellfish. A line that says only snails is not matched, so read those recipes yourself.

How do I clear my profile?#

Choose No specific diet, untick every allergen, remove the dislike tags, and press Save diet profile.