Family meal planning when everyone eats differently

How does per-person planning actually work?

Add each household member by name, then set that member's dietary options, the foods they won't eat, and — optionally — their own daily calorie, protein, carbohydrate, and fat targets. Those settings live on the individual, not the household, so two people at the same table can have completely different ones. Targets are daily numbers, but they're budgeted across the week rather than balanced meal by meal — so a rich night is fine when the rest of the week leaves room for it, and no single meal is allowed to eat most of that person's day.

You then choose which meals you want planned — dinners, breakfasts, lunches, snacks — how many of each, how many people each serves, and how many days it covers. The result is one plan for the household and one categorized shopping list.

Which dietary options can be set per person?

Gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, vegan, vegetarian, shellfish-free, egg-free, soy-free, low-carb, low-sugar, bariatric, and GLP-1. Each applies to the member it's set on, and one person can have several.

The twelve aren't all the same kind of thing. Eight of them take foods off the table entirely, and those are absolute — not a preference the plan can trade away. Seven of the eight get a second, automatic check once the week is written: anything that breaks one is regenerated. Gluten-free runs on its own path, built into each meal as it's planned and carried through to the shopping list. The other four — low-carb, low-sugar, bariatric and GLP-1 — change how that person's portion is prepared rather than removing an ingredient from the table. Bariatric and GLP-1 in particular pull in opposite directions on fat, so if both are set on one person the plan follows the GLP-1 guidance for them.

Can it plan one dinner when one person needs something different?

Yes, in two ways, and neither means cooking twice. The plan keeps one dish for the table and records a short note against that meal for whoever's serving differs — "Jen: smaller portion, skip rice." A note can go as far as a swapped main that keeps it recognizably the same dish: "Johnny: black beans instead of beef." The rest of the table's plan is unchanged.

Separately, you can set a standing alternate on any of the meals you've saved as a household favorite — if pasta night always needs a different main for one person, you write that once and it comes back with that meal every time it's planned. That one is a setting you control, not something generated for you, and it applies to anyone at the table.

What about someone who won't eat what's planned?

Each member — adults as much as children — has their own list of foods they won't eat, entered as free text and kept separate from the dietary options. That list is checked twice: it goes into the plan when it's generated, and the finished plan is scanned again — every meal's ingredients and every item on the shopping list — against every member's list. If a disliked ingredient turns up as a real part of a dish, that one meal is regenerated rather than the whole week. A disliked food that's only a garnish or background flavor doesn't block a meal the way a main ingredient does, and one person's exclusion is capped so it can't take over every dinner.

Can I change a week, and when?

Yes, at three different points, and they do different things.

Before the week is generated, you can shape it: request a specific meal and it arrives as a real planned meal rather than as inspiration, and mark nights or whole meal types off when nobody needs them. There's also a free-text “Anything else this week?” note, where you say what that week needs in your own words — “2 crockpot meals,” “something under 30 min for 3 of the nights,” “a proper meal on Saturday.” It applies to that week only. Counts like these are checked against the finished plan, and a request that can't be understood is shown back to you in your own words rather than silently dropped.

Your household's favorite cuisines shape the plan too, as a starting point rather than a fence, and the plan knows which nights are weeknights and which are weekend nights.

While you're reviewing the plan, before you accept it, you can swap any individual meal for a different one — the rest of the week stays exactly as it is.

Once you've accepted it, you can move meals between nights when the week turns out differently from how you expected.

What it doesn't do

Checked Out is a meal planning tool, not a medical service. Nothing it produces is medical advice, and the dietary options are settings you choose, not recommendations — see Not medical advice.

For a severe or life-threatening food allergy, don't rely on a generated plan. Check ingredients and cross-contamination risk yourself, with the manufacturer or the food provider.

It produces one shopping list for the household rather than one per person, and it doesn't connect to a grocery retailer's cart or need a store account.

Where it runs

On the web at app.checkedoutapp.com and on Android through Google Play. One subscription covers everyone in the household. The 14-day free trial doesn't ask for a card — you plan real weeks for your own household first, and only pay if you carry on, at $9.99 a month or $99 a year.