Questions and Answers

No. The app is only available as a subscription. You can download the app for free and explore a demo mode to see if the app is right for you.

Subscriptions are often vilified. But not all subscriptions are evil. The Pet Food and Health app tries to keep the subscription cost as low as possible. It does this by not allowing free use (which would be paid for by paying customers), and by keeping everything highly efficient. But there are some costs that cannot be avoided. Apple and Google want a share of the profit. And there are sales taxes. These alone make up about half of the subscription fee. What remains is used to keep the servers running (a monthly cost) and to pay for continued development (an ongoing task).

Above all, a subscription helps you to save money. The bespoke food mixes in the app help you to feed your pet the best possible food at the lowest possible price. These savings add up quickly and far exceed the small subscription costs of the app.

Limits are based on your subscription tier. These limits in the app are imposed to safeguard against abuse and limit how many pets, foods, medicines, and weights you can add. These limits are shown below:

Pet weights are limited to one entry per day per pet for up to one year.

Once you reach these limits the app notifies you and you will not be able to add any additional entries. However, you can continue to edit existing values. As soon as you delete an entry, such as an old medicine, you can once again add a new one.

For medicines and pet weights the app automatically cleans up the entries for you. If the medication expired it is deleted after 21 days. Pet weights are deleted after a year.

Absolutely. The app does not require an account, and does not require you to be online. An account is offered as a convenience to sync your data across devices. If you don't want an account that is totally fine. Everything in the app works exactly as expected whether you have an account or not, and whether you are online or offline.

Yes on iOS. No on Android. The app fully supports Family Sharing on iOS. App purchases and subscriptions are both shared through Family Sharing for iOS, so the subscription is available to everyone registered in your family (see https://www.apple.com/uk/family-sharing/). Google, however, does not support sharing of subscriptions (with the exception of Google subscriptions). As such it is not possible to share your subscription with anyone else on Android. If/when Google changes this policy the app can roll out full support for subscription sharing on Android.

Yes, proteins are essential for life. Pet food is heavily regulated in most countries. However, when it comes to protein levels, pet foods only have to adhere to a minimum protein level. These minimum levels are safety margins. Your pet may get seriously ill if they are not fed at least the required protein levels. However, the app reports both these established minimum protein levels as well as the scientifically recommended optimal protein levels.

Optimal protein levels specified in the app provide the essential building blocks your pet needs to truly thrive, rather than just survive. That's because proteins contain important amino acids that are, for example, required for cellular repair. And, as your pets age, their protein requirements increase as a percentage compared to their calorific needs. By feeding their optimal protein levels throughout their lives your pets always have a good safety store of healthy proteins which aids your pet's longevity and physical resilience.

Proteins also have a flip side; they are the most expensive macronutrient. It is much cheaper to meet the calorific requirements with fats and carbohydrates. For these reasons the app also advises you not to exceed optimal protein levels. Doing so only costs (a lot) more, without any provable benefit. If you are overfeeding proteins to your pet the app can create a bespoke food blend with just one tap that can save you a lot of money while still meeting your pet's needs.

Micronutrients play an important role, but are hard to analyse. The app only deals with macronutrients, but some micronutrients are equally important. The biggest issue with micronutrients is that pet food makers are not required to put these values on their food labels. This makes it exceedingly hard to determine if a given food meets all expected micronutrient levels. However, pet food regulations in many countries specify strict minima and maxima for all important micronutrients. So, as long as you buy reputable pet foods, you generally do not have to worry about micronutrient levels.

Feed your pet the amount indicated in the app. The app always feeds your pet according to their target weight. This means that, if your pet is currently overweight, your pet automatically gets fewer kcal per day than they would need to maintain their current weight i.e. your pet naturally loses weight. The same holds if your pet is underweight. Feeding your pet the indicated amount makes them gain weight.

If your pet is severely overweight/underweight, or if your pet keeps gaining/losing considerable weight when you feed the indicated amount you should always get in touch with your veterinarian and discuss your pet's health.

If your pet is losing a bit of weight or gaining a bit of weight when on their recommended amount of food then you can always personalise their food intake. To do so, tap on their pet card in the app, then on Edit. Adjust the food slider up/down as needed to fine-tune their food requirements.

Yes. Overfeeding a kitten or puppy can result in them growing too fast, while underfeeding could result in stunted growth. The app takes the growth curve of your puppy or kitten into account and adapts their feeding needs throughout their first year.

For a puppy or kitten it is advisable to set their date of birth as a precise date (i.e. including the day of the month they were born). When you set a precise date, the app calculates a food intake that is updated on a weekly basis between the age of 2 months through 6 months. These are the vital weeks where your puppy or kitten sees their biggest jumps in growth. These weekly food updates ensures that your puppy or kitten gets the right amount of food at every stage of their growth.

Yes. The app supports prescription food like any other food. When you don't make a food mix for your pet then, of course, all other features work as expected. You can analyse the prescription food, you can add medication and get notified, you can create reports to take to carers and veterinarians, etc.

*The app also allows easy integration of prescription food with treats -- assuming the prescription food meets the minimal/maximum protein requirements for your pet. To do so, simply create a mix where you select only your prescription food alongside any treats you want to give on a daily basis. The app helps you to find the optimal amount of prescription food to give to your pet. Your treats also show on the report so it gives real and truthful information to your veterinarian when you create a report for them.

No. The foods you select when creating a food mix are the foods that the app may use. The app selects the optimal mix for you based on these foods. Both extremes are possible: the app could select only one of the possible foods, or the app could decide to blend them all. You can fine-tune this process by unselecting the foods you do not want to be included.

If you always want a given amount of some food included, then this food is considered a treat. Foods that are treats need to be added as new foods and explicitly marked as a treat. You can add as many treats as you want to a food mix. All foods added as a treat are included in the food mix (and, adding too many may prevent the app from finding a suitable food mix for you, so don't overdo it).

Yes. There are two options here. Either your food blend serves to improve the protein intake of your pet. In that case add both foods to the app and create a new food mix for your pet. Only select these two foods. The new food mix proposed by the app should conclude both foods and will be fine-tuned to best match your pet's current needs.

If one of the foods is intended to improve flavour, or as an extra, then it should be added as a treat. To do so add this food (usually the wet food, or the food with less proteins) as a new food and mark it as a treat. When making your pet food mix select only the main food source. Then add the extra food as an exact weight in the treat section.