Our scientific sources

France's reference food composition table, published by ANSES, the national agency for food safety. DIAT relies on 3,484 of its foods: the calories, macronutrients and 27 micronutrients you see are taken from it as they are, with no adjustment on our side. It also powers the values of the 324 recipes on this site.

When you scan the barcode of a packaged product, its values come from Open Food Facts, the open collaborative database built from manufacturers' labels. That data is self-declared: some fields may be incomplete or approximate, and the app always lets you correct them. Each food's origin is shown on its detail sheet.

Your resting expenditure is calculated with the Mifflin-St Jeor equation, published in 1990 and since regarded as the most reliable predictive formula for the general population. Your total expenditure follows from it, through an activity factor between 1.2 (sedentary) and 1.9 (very active).

Mifflin MD, St Jeor ST, Hill LA, Scott BJ, Daugherty SA, Koh YO. A new predictive equation for resting energy expenditure in healthy individuals. Am J Clin Nutr. 1990;51(2):241-247.

Each of the 150 activities in the journal carries a MET value, the unit measuring the intensity of an effort relative to rest. These values come from the Compendium of Physical Activities, the international reference used in research since 1993 and updated in 2011.

Ainsworth BE, Haskell WL, Herrmann SD, et al. 2011 Compendium of Physical Activities: a second update of codes and MET values. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2011;43(8):1575-1581.

The micronutrient gauges compare your intake to the dietary reference values of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), which differ for women and men. That's what makes it possible to say "62% of your iron" instead of a raw figure in milligrams that means nothing to anyone.

The BMI in your profile is your weight divided by your height squared, and its categories follow the WHO definitions: for adults, overweight starts at a BMI of 25 and obesity at 30.

The meals the coach suggests draw on the WHO guidance on a healthy diet: at least 400 g of fruit and vegetables a day, free sugars below 10% of daily energy, and little salt and few unhealthy fats.

The coach's activity advice relies on the WHO recommendations, starting with at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity a week for adults, with muscle strengthening, which benefits everyone.

The NHS, the UK's health service, advises aiming to lose 0.5 to 1 kg a week. That is why DIAT caps your pace: at most 1% of your body weight a week when you are losing weight.

Low-calorie diets usually allow about 1,200 to 1,500 calories a day for women and 1,500 to 1,800 for men; going lower calls for medical supervision. That is why your target never drops below 1,200 kcal for a woman or 1,500 kcal for a man.