Two tools for the grocery run. Browse mode answers “is this product okay for me?” in the aisle without anything landing in your diary, and remembers the good ones. The shopping list plans the trip at home from your recipes and saved foods, then lets you tick things off in the store.
Browse mode (barcode)
Open the camera and tap Browse at the end of the mode selector above the shutter (or swipe across the preview until it’s centered). Point it at any product barcode and a verdict card slides up with:
- the product name and a Safe / Moderate / Limit chip with the kidney score,
- phosphate and potassium additive warnings — the ingredients a label’s numbers don’t reveal, which is the whole reason to check packaged food,
- sodium, potassium, and phosphorus per serving as a share of your personal daily budget,
- a one-line verdict written for your kidney profile.
From the card you can tap Next to keep scanning, Save to keep the product in your Saved Foods for next time (one tap to log it later, filed under its grocery category), or Log anyway to send it through the normal barcode logging flow after all.
A browse check counts toward the free plan’s daily scans, exactly like a regular scan — but re-checking the same product within a week is instant and free (the result is remembered), and Log anyway never costs a second scan. Editing your kidney profile always forces a fresh, up-to-date check.
Browse checks themselves never appear in your diary or Scan History. If you tap Log anyway and then back out without adding the product to your diary, it stays in Scan History with a Not logged badge; adding it later removes the badge.
Browse mode is for barcodes only. To check a plated meal or a nutrition label, use the regular Meal or Label scan — nothing is written to your diary until you tap Add to Diary.
The shopping list
Your list lives behind the cart icon at the top of the Recipes tab (it gets a dot while there’s something left to buy), in Settings, and one tap away in the confirmation after you add ingredients from a recipe. It’s free for everyone.
Items are grouped by grocery category — Produce, Meat & Fish, Breads & Grains, and so on. Tap an item to check it off, swipe to delete it, use the checkmark button in the header to clear everything checked, and type into the Add an item… row for quick manual additions.
Rows look like your Saved Foods: the name, a caption with where it came from and any amount, and sodium, potassium, phosphorus, and protein when the item carries nutrients. An item that came with an analysis (foods sent from the web app’s analysis results) shows its verdict and a › that opens the full card. Checked items stay where they are, dimmed and crossed out, until you clear them. The ? in the header lists these gestures and links to support chat.
The list fills from three places:
- Recipes — open any recipe’s ⋯ menu and tap Add Ingredients to Shopping List. If your Servings to Eat differs from the recipe’s yield, you’re asked whether to add amounts for the Full recipe or just My servings (on the web, the toggle above the ingredient list decides). Amounts come along, and duplicates merge: two recipes that both need onions become one “onions” row with the amounts summed and a ×2 marker.
- Saved Foods — long-press to select the foods you’re out of, then tap ⋯ → Add to shopping list. They land under their grocery categories, merged with anything already there.
- Manual entries — the Add an item… row.
Checking off an item and later re-adding it (say, from next week’s recipe) revives it unchecked — re-adding something you bought means you need it again.
The shopping list is on the web app too — Shopping List in the sidebar at web.kidneypal.app — synced with your phone. On the web, analyzed foods on the Log page also offer Add to shopping list.
