Welcome to the Q&A page! This page covers the most frequently asked questions about the Pet Food and Health app.
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:
| owner | breeder | |
|---|---|---|
| pets | 5 | 25 |
| foods | 25 | 125 |
| medicines | 50 | 250 |
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.
No. You can use every feature of the app straight away without ever signing in. All of your pets, foods, medicines, and food blends are stored on your device from the very first tap.
An account only becomes useful once you want to use the app on more than one device. Signing in with your email lets the app keep your data in sync across devices. If you never need that, you can safely ignore the sign-in option -- nothing in the app is held back if you don't create one.
Yes. By default, all your pet and health data lives only on your device -- it never leaves your phone or tablet unless you choose to create an account.
If you do sign in to sync across devices, your data is transmitted and stored securely. The app does not sell your data or use it for advertising. See our Privacy Policy for the full details.
Nothing is lost. Every change you make, whether you're online or not, is saved to your device immediately. If you have an account, those changes are automatically synced to your other devices the next time you have an internet connection.
This also means you can safely make changes on more than one device while offline, for example update a pet's weight on your phone and add a medicine on your tablet. As soon as both devices reconnect, the app merges the changes together so nothing gets overwritten. This syncing can take some time, so do no expect the changes to instantly pop up on the other device.
Not really. You can always enter an approximate date of birth (just the month and year) instead of an exact one, and the app will use that to calculate your pet's age and feeding needs as normal.
The one place a precise date matters is during your pet's first year, and especially their first six months. That's when growth is fastest and food needs change from week to week. An exact date of birth lets the app follow that growth curve week by week; an approximate date means it can only update on a monthly basis instead. Once your pet is past their first birthday, the difference between an exact and approximate date of birth no longer matters.
The pet, along with their foods, medicines, weights, and food blends, is permanently removed. If you have an account, this removal is also synced to your other devices. This action cannot be undone.
Use the built-in feline Body Mass Index (fBMI) calculator. Unlike a simple weight check, fBMI takes your cat's frame into account by combining two quick measurements -- a leg length and their ribcage circumference -- into a single body condition score. You'll find this tool on your cat's pet card.
The result places your cat into one of four categories: underweight, normal, overweight, or obese. This gives you a much better picture of your cat's condition than their weight on its own, since it accounts for their individual build rather than assuming every cat of a given weight is equally healthy. In addition, calculating the fBMI also allows the app itself to make better estimates of the calorific needs of your cat. Calculating the fBMI is thus definitely worth the little bit of extra work!
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.
Protein provide the essential amino-acids required to maintain and grow muscle and tissue. Protein is essential for repairing and growing tissue after exercise, regardless of how vigorous the activity was. However, because the body cannot store protein, it must be consumed regularly by your pet.
When a pet eats protein, it is digested within 3 to 6 hours. This breaks the protein down into essential amino acids, which enter the bloodstream, then peak around 1–2 hours after the meal, and taper off after about 5 hours. You don’t need to time meals specifically around exercise, though; muscle repair can be triggered up to 48 hours after activity, whenever those amino acids become available.
Balance is key. Overfeeding protein is wasteful because the body cannot save the excess; instead, it breaks down the extra nitrogen and excretes it as urea. Conversely, too little protein is also problematic. If there aren't enough amino acids available for repair, the body can begin breaking down its own muscle and tissue to compensate. To keep pets healthy, food should provide a consistent, ideal supply of protein that is never too much, and never too little. That is exactly what a food blend in the Pet Food and Health app can calculate for you.
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. That same food slider isn't only there for weight management -- you can use it any time you want more control over your pet's calorie target. Perhaps your pet is recovering from an illness, is more or less active than usual, or you simply want to fine-tune things based on what you're seeing at home.
To adjust it, tap on your pet's card in the app, then on Edit, and move the food slider up or down as needed. From that point on, every food blend and feeding recommendation for that pet is based on your adjusted target instead of the calculated one, until you change it again.
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.
A food blend is a customised mix of your available foods, optimized for your pet's specific calorie and protein needs. First, the app calculates your pet's exact calorie requirements based on their age, lifestyle, activity level, etc. It then attempts to find a food combination that hits both those calorie targets and your pet's ideal protein intake. If you have sources of high protein available, such as premium foods, the app can find that perfect mix that matches the calories required and reaches the optimal protein intake. If a perfect match isn't possible, the app prioritises meeting the required calories while ensuring protein levels meet or exceed the minimum requirement.
No. The foods you select when creating a food blend are the foods that the app may use. The app selects the optimal blend 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 blend. All foods added as a treat are included in the food blend (and, adding too many may prevent the app from finding a suitable food blend 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 blend for your pet. Only select these two foods. The new food blend 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 blend select only the main food source. Then add the extra food as an exact weight in the treat section.
Because your pet's calorie needs have changed since the blend was made. A food blend is calculated to hit a specific calorie and protein target at the time you create it. But your pet's needs shift over time -- they gain or lose weight, grow older, become more or less active, and so on. When your pet's current calculated needs drift too far from what the blend was built for, the app flags it as out of date so you know it's worth a second look.
This isn't cause for alarm -- your pet isn't going without food in the meantime. It's simply a nudge to open the blend and let the app recalculate it, so it keeps matching your pet's needs as closely as possible.
Whatever fits how your pet actually takes their medication. The app supports several types of schedules, so you're not stuck forcing an odd dosing pattern into a simple daily reminder:
Whichever type fits, you can log every dose as given, skipped, or not given, so you always have an accurate history to look back on.
Yes. Alongside reminders to give a dose, you can set a reorder date, or a reorder frequency, for any medication. The app then sends you a reminder ahead of time, so you're not caught out searching for a replacement the day the last dose runs out.
Yes. From any pet's card you can generate a report as a PDF, ready to send however suits you -- AirDrop, email, or any other share option your device offers. What you put in the report is entirely up to you, so it can be as short or as complete as the situation calls for. A few examples:
The app walks you through exactly what to include when you create a report, so it's easy to put together whichever version you need.
Yes. Every report is built section by section, so you only include what's relevant. You can choose to add your pet's details, their food blend and food analysis, a weight chart (and pick how far back it should go), their medication list, and a chart of their medication intake over a chosen period. You can also pick the paper size the report is formatted for. Nothing is included unless you choose to add it.