Privacy Policy — NUA Nutrition
Last updated: 15 September 2026
The short version: NUA Nutrition does not collect your data. Everything you enter stays on your iPhone. A few optional features ask our answer-server one question at a time — it stores nothing and cannot tell two requests apart.
What we collect
Nothing. There is no account, no sign-in, no analytics, no advertising, and no tracking. We keep no database of users and could not identify you if we wanted to.
What you enter
Your meals, photos, check-ins, reflections and settings are saved in a private database inside the app on your device. They are never backed up to us and we cannot read them. The only things that leave your phone are the single questions described under "Our function server" below, and only while you use one of those features.
If you use "Save a copy", the app creates one file with your whole diary and your photos. That file is not encrypted: anyone who has it can read it, so keep it somewhere only you can open.
Photos
Meal photos are stored in the app's private storage on your device. If you use photo recognition, that one photo is transmitted once to our function server to be identified, processed in memory, and not stored — the answer comes back, the photo is gone. You can always skip recognition and name the photo yourself; then it never leaves your phone. If you told the app that you eat vegetarian, vegan or pescatarian, that diet style is sent along with the photo, so the recognition reads your plate accordingly; nothing else about you is.
Apple Health
If you choose to connect Apple Health, the app reads your daily step count — read-only, on the device. The day's count is kept in the app's database on your phone so the weekly view can include it. Nothing is written to Health and nothing is transmitted.
Our function server
Some features need more than a phone can hold: recognising a photo, looking up a new barcode, and writing the AI texts. For these, the app sends a single question to our function server (hosted by Hetzner in Germany) — one photo (with your diet style, if you chose vegetarian, vegan or pescatarian), one barcode number, one meal description, the details of a single meal for its written review, the meals of the past seven days for the weekly reflection, or a short summary for meal ideas: what you are craving, how hungry you are, your diet style, foods you often log, today's meal names, the titles of recent ideas and — outside protected mode — nutrients that have been quiet in your week and, if you entered the first day of your last period, the current cycle phase. The server answers and forgets: it stores nothing, keeps no history, and never receives your name or an account. The AI features are off until you switch them on, and can be switched off again at any time. Without them, text estimates and meal ideas fall back to the food database on your phone; photo recognition, written meal reviews and barcode lookups need the connection and simply rest without it.
Data sharing
To produce an answer, two processors are involved and receive only the content of the single request: Anthropic (the AI provider, which processes the photo or text to generate the answer and does not use it to train models), and Open Food Facts (which receives only the barcode number or product name when a product is not in our own catalogue). For a packaged product neither source knows, the AI may run a web search to read the manufacturer's published nutrition facts — the search contains only the product name, never anything about you. Nothing else is shared with anyone.
Deleting your data
Deleting the app removes everything with it. Because nothing is stored elsewhere, this is permanent — an iPhone backup, or the app's own "Save a copy" export, is what preserves your history.
Children
NUA Nutrition is not directed at children under 13.
Nutrition information
Reference values follow the DACH/DGE references for adults. Nutrition data comes from the Bundeslebensmittelschlüssel (BLS 4.0), Max Rubner-Institut. The app provides general information and is not medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, and does not replace care from a doctor or dietitian.
AI transparency (EU AI Act, Art. 50)
Meal reviews, meal suggestions, nutrition estimates from text, photo recognition and the weekly reflection can be AI-generated. Every AI-written text is visibly labelled "AI-generated · may contain errors" inside the app. When AI is switched off, or the server is unreachable, the app uses its built-in food database and curated content instead — and labels that honestly too.
Contact
anna.gaertner@whu.edu
Changes
Any update to this policy will appear on this page with a new date.