Name a meal you have logged and it is kept in your cookbook under My meals. One tap puts the whole meal back on any day, and it goes onto the meal planner as a single card. The planner has the tracker's new look too: the whole week on one screen, a chart of the week's planned calories, a button that fills a week from your calorie level, and Log this day.

Add the tracker to your phone's home screen and it now opens as its own app, without the website's menu across the top. On a laptop the search box sits at the top and the log opens as one window, results on the left and the portion on the right. Search matches your words in any order, so "raw banana" and "banana raw" find the same food among 5,740 USDA foods.

Every USDA food you log now carries more than five numbers. Today shows added sugars, saturated fat and sodium against your own limits, the grains row says how much of what you logged was whole grain, and the week shows the vegetable and protein subgroups plus fiber, calcium, potassium, vitamin D and iron against your Dietary Reference Intakes. A food you type yourself says which amounts are missing rather than showing a zero.

The MyPlate Tracker has a new design, and the plate is now the biggest thing on the screen: one plate seen at an angle, the five food groups in the official MyPlate order, milk in a cup beside it, and the day's calorie count underneath. Go past a group's target and that edge of the plate turns amber. Your week runs across the top, so any day is one tap away.

The rest of the app matches. On a laptop the tracker has a sidebar inside the site, and the log opens as one window with the search and the portion side by side. The numbers did not change: the same food-pattern targets and the same USDA food data as before.

The tracker also works without a signal now. What you log is saved on your phone and sent when you are back online. There is also a daily reminder at a time you pick, a streak that survives one missed day, and a one-tap way to copy yesterday's breakfast, lunch or dinner.

The twelve calorie-level checklists on the printables page print differently now: one page tracks a whole week. The same daily tick boxes, one per cup or ounce-equivalent straight from the food-pattern tables, repeat in seven day columns under a week-of date line, so the sheet goes on the fridge once a week instead of into the printer every morning. The 2,000-calorie sheet shows the layout.

The MyPlate Worksheets page now holds seven free printable food-group worksheets. New this week: a MyPlate coloring page for K-2 (color each section its MyPlate color, draw a food in each), a 13×13 food-group word search with the word list grouped by food group, a Which food group? circle-the-answer sheet that includes the foods classes argue about (potato, popcorn, tofu, fortified soy milk), and a Food group odd one out sheet, where you circle the odd food and then name the group the other three share.

Every sheet has the same classroom basics: a name and date line, one activity per page, and black-and-white printing. Its answer key is on the worksheets page, one QR scan from the printed sheet. Every food on every sheet is sorted by the same USDA food-group data the rest of the site uses. They sit in the classroom section of the printables library, next to the quizzes, which also print as worksheets.

The water intake calculator now shows a chart by body weight under the result: each weight at three activity levels, worked out by the same arithmetic the calculator runs, so the number you would get by typing your weight is the number printed in the row. It is on the page in all five languages.

The same chart prints as the Daily Water Intake Chart by Weight, a one-page sheet for the fridge or a clinic wall. The official Dietary Reference Intake values for total water sit on the sheet separately, marked as what they are: a federal reference, not the rule of thumb.

The printables page now has five sections instead of one long list of identical cards: the classroom, health conditions, charts and checklists, everyday healthy eating, and plant-based. A row of links at the top jumps to each section and says how many sheets it holds. One-off handouts stay as cards, the 10-Tips series is a compact list, and the calorie-level checklists are one row of levels to pick from.

Two sheets are easier to find now. The six MyPlate quizzes print as classroom worksheets with the answer key on its own page, so they are listed in the classroom section, and the MyPlate Plan one-sheet sits first, directly under the title.

Every calorie level from 1,000 to 3,200 now has a printable daily checklist: the day's five food-group amounts with a box to tick for each, taken from the same food-pattern tables the calculator uses for that level, plus a QR code back to the calculator if you need to find your level. Pick yours from the checklists row on the printables page, such as the 2,000-calorie sheet.

Each calorie-level meal plan links to its matching checklist and back, so the plan for the week and the sheet for the day come from the same numbers.

What one serving actually looks like, and how to measure it with your hand: the new Serving Size & Hand Portion Guide puts the serving sizes for all five food groups on one page, with the hand measure beside each. There is a Spanish version too, the Guía de porciones y medidas con la mano.

The MyPlate Plan one-sheet now has a Spanish version: El Plan MiPlato en una hoja. It puts the whole method on one printable page, the plate, the drinks and moving more, as a PDF with a QR code to the Spanish site. It sits first on the Spanish printables page, and miplato.food, the address printed on it, now opens the Spanish site.

Eight more calculators now have a Save button on the result: waist-to-height and waist-to-hip ratio, lean body mass, FFMI, water intake, weight-loss percentage, one-rep max and GLP-1 protein. Signed in, the value goes to a measurements card on your MyPlan dashboard with its label and date, a link to run it again, and a delete. Signed out, the save waits until you sign in, then finishes.

Each result page also links to the full MyPlate Plan, the daily food-group plan these single-number tools sit beside. All of them are listed on the calculators page.

How many calories in an egg? A teaspoon of sugar? Half a cup of baked beans? The new food lookup tells you, by the portion you actually use: search 5,740 USDA foods from your dashboard, pick a portion like "1 egg" or "1 slice," set how many, and the calories are right there, with protein, carbs and fat beside them. Every food names its USDA FoodData Central source.

One tap adds what you found to any day and meal in the MyPlate Tracker. It has its own screen in your dashboard, a search box on the overview, and a place in the Tracker & Foods menu.

The NASEM 2023 edition of our calculators now uses NASEM's own pregnancy and lactation equations (Tables 5-17 through 5-19) instead of applying the older IOM adjustments to the newer baseline. Pregnancy targets shift by up to about 200 calories depending on activity; lactation adjustments become +400 (first six months) and +380 (months 7 to 12). The IOM 2005 edition is unchanged, so each edition stays true to its own source.

We also fixed two gaps at age boundaries: anyone between their 8th and 9th birthday, or between their 18th and 19th, was given the wrong equation. Every equation and constant is written out on the methodology page, and our editorial policy lists 43 checks that run before every release, including the exact ages that were wrong.

If you open the MyPlate Tracker without a saved plan, the prompt under the ring now opens the plan editor right there. Add your height, weight and activity, save, and the ring fills with your calorie and food-group targets. The full MyPlate calculator is still one tap away if you want the longer, guided version.

On every calculator, from the MyPlate Plan to protein, BMR, TDEE, macros, BMI and body fat, saving now takes you straight to the tracker with the log open and your numbers already set. Log one meal and today's plate starts filling in.

The recipe library now has a Low carb toggle, meaning 15 g of carbohydrates or less per serving, right beside High protein. Both filters read the per-serving nutrition every recipe already carries, so the number you see is the published one, not an estimate.

The High-Protein Foods Chart lists 46 USDA foods by MyPlate group with the protein in each serving, built from the same USDA data the tracker searches. Two heart-focused sheets join the printables library with it: the DASH eating plan's servings chart, copied cell for cell from the NIH publication, and a heart-healthy plate handout.

Every recipe now has Cook Mode. Your screen stays awake while you cook, the directions show one step at a time in big type with back and next buttons, and the ingredient list turns into a list you can tick off. Open any of the 1,072 recipes and start cooking.

A new MyPlate Worksheets page for teachers, starting with three worksheets ready to print: food-group sorting, food-to-group matching, and plate labeling. Each has its answer key on the same page. Put them with the printables and quizzes for a full lesson. Free, no signup.

Eating plant-based on the MyPlate pattern now has a full kit: a vegan 7-day meal plan at 1,700 calories, a vegetarian week at 2,000, a Vegan Recipes collection drawn from the USDA recipes, the vegetarian protein groups spelled out on the food-group pages, and four plant-based sheets in the printables library.

A reader asked for it, so we made it: 25 kid-friendly snack ideas grouped by MyPlate food group, ready to print in English and Spanish, in the printables library. The request came through the "missing a printable?" box on that page.

The MyPlate Tracker now searches 5,740 USDA foods with calories built in. Type a food, pick a household portion like "1 medium" or "2 slices," and one tap logs it with the calories already filled in. Every entry comes from USDA FoodData Central, so the number you log is the published one.

Quick add now logs a food by name alone, so you can start without knowing the calories. Add them later, or let the Foods tab fill them in.

When your BMI falls outside the healthy range, the MyPlate Calculator now shows a second calorie figure beside the one that maintains your weight today: the daily target for a weight in the middle of the healthy BMI range. The original USDA MyPlate Plan offered this second number too, and we rebuilt it with the same USDA equations we use everywhere else.

The advice is small, steady changes if the goal is to move down, and gentle guidance if it is to move up, with a plain note on exactly how the number is worked out. It prints with the rest of your plan, and a clinician can leave it off a patient handout in Print options. MyPlate.food is independent and not affiliated with USDA.

Teachers were already using the quizzes, printables and recipes in class, so one page now collects the whole kit: the Build-a-Day class activity with a printable assignment sheet and grading rubric, six food-group quizzes, the tip sheets, and the food diary template. All of it is free, prints cleanly, and needs no login for students.

Quizzes, tip sheets and Build a Day now have Share to Classroom and Share to Teams buttons, so one click posts them to a class. The Spanish pages are written in Spanish: Plato del Bien Comer printables and quizzes for Spanish class and ESL, at /es/para-maestros.

Build a Day came from a real class assignment: find a breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack and dessert. It gives you five slots, 1,072 USDA recipes to fill them from, and a running check of whether the day covers all five MyPlate food groups.

It needs no account. Your day is kept in your browser and in the link you copy, never on our servers. It prints as one clean page, and the link pastes straight into Google Classroom or Teams. It is in all five languages: English, Spanish, French, Korean and German.

On a GLP-1, appetite drops and the hard part is no longer eating less. It is getting enough protein to hold onto muscle across a few small meals. The new MyPlan GLP-1 Companion tracks a protein target you aim to reach, not a calorie limit you stay under. It shows where you are in your dose week and keeps easy backup meals ready for the days you cannot eat much.

It is free, it has no medication to sell, and it recommends no prescriber. There is a mode for after you stop taking the drug, so the eating habits carry on without it. Every target shows its source, and the longer nutrition write-up is in the GLP-1 guide.

Official dietary guidance changed a lot lately: the US retired MyPlate as its federal icon in January, and Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Mexico, and South Korea all revised their guidance within the last two years. Most of those changes got almost no plain-language coverage.

Guideline Watch is a dated log of what changed in the guidelines and food rules we document. One entry per real change, a flag showing which country it applies to, a plain "what it means" line, and a link to every primary source. It starts with 17 entries across eight countries and regions, plus the EAT-Lancet Commission and the ADA.

The bigger changes get their own page with a full write-up, starting with the ADA's 2026 Standards of Care and South Korea's 2025 nutrient reference values. There is an RSS feed too.

Eight new pages cover the BZfE Ernährungspyramide, the DGE-Ernährungskreis and its 2024 recommendations, and the Austrian and Swiss models. All four were renewed in 2024.

They include a Portionsrechner, where you tap to fill a day's 22 portion blocks, and an energy-needs lookup for Germany, Austria and Switzerland built on the published DGE and ÖGE tables. All in five languages.

The whole site is now in German: the calculators, the food groups, the portions, and all 1,072 recipes, alongside English, Spanish, Korean and French.

New German-first pages include the BMI-Rechner and the Kalorienrechner.

Share any calculator result as a link. It reopens the same numbers forever, even after we add new options, because the numbers are stored in the link itself and never reach our servers.

Dietary guidelines now sit in the Learn menu as one list, the main calculator is simply the “MyPlate Calculator”, and the language menu shows full native names (Deutsch, Español, and the rest).

The tracker is now a full part of your dashboard: a calorie ring, a plate that fills by food group exactly as USDA draws it, a week you can tap through, and one tap to log a meal.

Install it to your home screen and it works as an app. See the calorie tracker overview.

The USDA “10 Tips” series is back as 12 print-ready tip sheets and 14 Spanish ones, two of them recovered originals. The food-group quizzes are back with the original questions.

Seven new calculators joined, among them one-rep max, water intake, FFMI, waist ratios, lean body mass, and weight-loss percentage.

Every calculator now has a “Formula & sources” section showing the equations, taken from the same code that works out your numbers.

Free 7-day meal plans at every calorie level, built only from USDA recipes, with a weekly planner and pages made to print.