Eating out is one of the hardest parts of a kidney diet — menus rarely say what’s in a dish, and restaurant food is usually far saltier than home cooking. Menu mode reads a photo of the menu and shows you which dishes are the better picks for your kidney profile, before you order.
How to Scan a Menu
- Tap the camera icon at the bottom of your screen (or Scan in the Add Food sheet).
- Choose Menu from the mode selector above the shutter (tap it, or swipe across the preview) — alongside Meal, Label, Barcode, and Browse.
- Point your phone at the menu and tap the capture button. You can also pick a menu photo from your gallery.
- Wait a few seconds while KidneyPal reads the menu and ranks the dishes.
For best results, get close and fill the frame with one section of the menu at a time — a whole multi-column menu from across the table is usually too small to read. Bright, even light helps; use the flash in a dim restaurant.
Reading Your Menu Picks
The results screen shows the restaurant name (when it’s printed on the menu), the cuisine, and a list of up to 15 dishes ranked best-first for your kidney profile — your condition or stage, dialysis status, and daily limits all shape the order.
Each dish shows:
- A pick label — Best pick, Okay in moderation, or Go easy. These are relative to what’s on this menu, not a medical clearance: a “Best pick” at a steakhouse is still restaurant food.
- Why — one line on the biggest kidney factor, like “Grilled and lower in sodium” or “Very high sodium from the cured meat.”
- An ordering tip (when there’s something useful) — a concrete ask for your server, such as “Dressing on the side” or “Ask for no added salt.”
Below the dishes, Ordering tips gives a few general pointers for that kind of restaurant — choose grilled over fried, sauces on the side, skip pickled toppings, and so on.
The numbers behind the ranking are rough estimates for a typical restaurant portion. KidneyPal can’t see how the kitchen prepares the dish or how much lands on your plate, so treat Menu mode as “which of these is the better choice” guidance, not a nutrition label. Once the food arrives, a Meal scan of your actual plate gives a closer estimate.
You don’t have to log anything. If you just want help choosing, read the picks and tap back — nothing is added to your diary.
Logging What You Ordered
When you’ve decided, tap I ordered this on the dish. A sheet asks for:
- Meal type — breakfast, lunch, dinner, or snack, pre-selected from the time of day.
- Portion — how much of a typical full restaurant serving you ate: Half, Full, 1½, or 2. “Full” means the complete plate or order as the restaurant usually serves it, including its standard sides and sauces. The estimated sodium, potassium, phosphorus, and protein update as you change it, and if you’ve turned on any optional nutrients (calories, carbs, fat, magnesium, calcium, vitamin K, or oxalate), their estimates appear underneath too.
Tap Add to diary and the dish is logged to today with those estimated nutrients — the core four plus any optional nutrients the analysis could estimate — marked with a ~ to remind you they’re approximate. You can edit or delete it from the Diary like any other entry.
When the Scan Doesn’t Work
- “That doesn’t look like a menu” — the photo was something else (a plate of food, a label, a receipt). Tap Switch to Meal mode to scan food instead, or Retake photo.
- “Couldn’t read the dishes” — it looks like a menu, but the text is too small or blurry. Get closer, frame a single section, and try again.
- “Couldn’t read the menu” — a connection or service problem. Tap Try again.
Scan Allowance
Menu scans share the same free allowance as everything else: 5 AI analyses per day across photo, label, barcode, menu, and Quick Log combined, resetting at midnight local time. KidneyPal Pro removes the limit — see Subscription & Billing.
