Where our guidance comes from

Bolus does not invent its nutrition. There is a Where our guidance comes from link at the bottom of Settings, and this is what sits behind it.

The food we plan

Meals are designed around UK government dietary recommendations, alongside what tastes good and what you can actually cook on a weeknight. There is no per-recipe numeric gate: the guidance shapes the catalogue rather than scoring each dish.

The nutrition figures

Values for each meal are calculated from its ingredients using McCance and Widdowson’s The Composition of Foods, the UK reference dataset, and from manufacturers’ product labels where that dataset does not cover a product.

The reference intakes

Where Insights or your weekly review compares a figure against a number, that number is a UK population reference intake, from SACN and COMA. They are reference intakes, not targets Bolus has set for you, and Bolus deliberately shows no target for calories or carbohydrate.

Plant variety

The 30-plants-a-week measure comes from published gut microbiome research rather than from government intake guidance, which is why it is presented separately from the nutrient figures.

Time in range

Where Insights describes readings as in range, it follows the widely used international consensus range for time in range. The lines at 4 and 10 mmol/L on the meal charts are there to read the chart against; they are not a target Bolus is setting you.

What this is not

None of it is personal medical advice. Bolus is not a medical device, does not diagnose, and gives no insulin dosing guidance. See is Bolus a medical device.