What is AdapNation’s Butler?

The Why & Evolution of The AdapNation Food Diary

Since the beginning of 2018, we’ve been busy bees cooking up tasty nutritious meal ideas and posting them up on the AdapNation Food Diary. 180+ tasty and nutritious meals and counting.

The motivation has always been to enable and excite people to cook tasty food from scratch, and to fall in love with nature’s rich flavours and nutrition. We wanted to offer an alternative to crash diets, where people can make informed decisions on how to manage their body goals and optimally care for their wellness.

The Losing Bodyweight for Good Article series, the IIFYM+ Thrive Eating Approach, and the priority for having an exciting relationship with food continue to be the guiding principles we follow with EVERY meal we post (and eat!).

With hundreds of meals now available, with calories, portion size options, macronutrient insight, ingredients and associated health benefits, we are absolutely living up to this mission. The reaction and impact has been lovely to see, but of course scaled change and enablement takes time.

How Can we Help More People Get Inspired & Cook?

So, we started to think – “How can the AdapNation Food Diary better serve people? How can it be more useful, and what is missing in the marketplace that makes online and/or ccokbook recipes fall short?”

In discussing these questions with followers of AdapNation, this is what we were hearing:

“AdapNation Food Diary meals look great, and have lots of valuable info. They look like real-world and achievable meals we can make in our kitchen. We’ve taken some inspiration from particular meals and the general theme of IIFYM+ Thrive. But…”

1. “You’ve now got 100’s of meals. I’ve got to go and proactively flick through them to work out if any take our fancy.”
2. “I’ll see a new post, get excited by it, but forget about the meal and its ingredients when I next go shopping”
3. “I’ll see a meal I like, but won’t have the ingredients on hand to cook it up there and then”
4. “Sometimes I don’t have a lot of time, so it can be hard to judge what of the AdapNation meals I have the interest and time to make”
5. “Some of the meals look like you need a lot of skill to make. It’s easier to just keep eating the way we do”
6. “We’ll get in the mood to experiment and make something new, but it’s not possible for us to search the internet and scan through Google (or AdapNation) to find something we can make for Dinner with the ingredients we have and what we fancy eating”
7. Most of the cookbooks and meal ideas on the internet look too elaborate, fancy and require loads of ingredients we don’t usually have. It feels misleading when things are labelled as ‘quick and easy’

There were more comments, but the general gist was that it was unlikely that a randomly published post on Facebook would immediately motivate someone to cook it up, due to timing, ingredients availability, their preferences and generally interrupting prior plans/habits.

So, whilst it’s not possible to solve all of these obstacles single-handedly, how could we evolve the AdapNation Food Diary to become a more useful, proactive resource that people can use to help support creative and exciting home-cooking?

Introducing AdapNation’s Food Diary Butler

What’s in a name? Well, when you think of a Butler, you think of someone who recommends, guides and serves you food. They take your requests to the kitchen, and come back with just what you are after.

Most importantly, having a Butler is a privileged service, made available to only those with sufficient wealth and a desire for amazing home-cooked service. Butler’s are considered your personal assistant as it relates to your dietary affairs. 

Well, that’s the premise behind AdapNation’s Food Diary Butler. A personalised Menu of meal recommendations based on your specific needs, interests, time and available ingredients, that you get to explore, read up on and ultimately select.

And once you make your choice, the order is ‘placed with the kitchen’. As in, you, with your chef hat on, get given the exact ingredient list and guidance on how put the delicious meal together.

Most importantly – AdapNation’s Food Diary Butler turns you from a naive consumer of food to someone who is aware of flavours, textures, macros, calories and the vast array of associated wellness benefits. It’s all about enablement. Enabling you to love and know how to THRIVE through delicious food!

The One Major Difference to Real-World Butlers

Oh, there is one major difference. It’s totally FREE! You’re still as privileged, but benefit from developing your Kitchen IQ and having an ever increasing Menu to choose from. 

Your house will be the talk of the town as you continue to crank out beautiful tasting food made from scratch, where you literally taste the goodness and health benefits. 

How Does AdapNation Food Diary Butler Work?

The best news – It’s super easy.

The Butler tool is available at this URL – https://adapnation.io/adapnationbutler/. I’d suggest selecting ‘Add To Home Screen‘ on your Smartphone to have it always available as an App.

Once you click through, you’ll be presented with Butler. Scroll down and start filling in some or all of the fields, based on your needs or mood.

You can start anywhere, and results immediately appear. It’s really straight forward. That said, here’s a quick How-To based on a simple example.

#1 – Select The Desired Effort Level

Most all AdapNation Food Diary meals are centred around being quick and easy meals, that are easy to understand, have minimal cooking processes and do not require extravagant cooking equipment. 

That said, some meals are super easy (such as salads) and a few meals are more challenging due to a number of cooked ingredients and a degree of confidence needed. There are four Effort Levels, with the super majority of AdapNation Food Diary meals falling into Easy & Medium.

1. EASY – Quick & easy meals using minimal cooking processes, with speedy prep and clean up. Average Prep & Cooking Time = 15 – 30mins.
2. MEDIUM – Relatively straightforward meals using day-to-day cooking processes, with moderate prep and clean up. Average Prep & Cooking Time = ~30mins.
3. CHALLENGING – A more involved cooking effort, where time and skill are increased, with various day-to-day cooking processes used. Longer prep and clean up needed. Average Prep & Cooking Time = 40 – 60mins.
4. COMPLEX – Meals that require a higher kitchen skill level and highest degree of multi-tasking. Multiple day-to-day or niche cooking processes used. Longest prep and clean up needed. Average Prep & Cooking Time = 40 – 75mins.

Just go ahead and select an Effort Level from the Effort Level drop down.

#2 – Select The Meal Time

Simply select between Breakfast, Brunch, Lunch, Post Workout, Dinner, Dessert or Snack.

You’ll find the majority of the AdapNation Food Diary meals centre around Dinner, Lunch & Brunch, with few options for Breakfast and Snacks. This is in part due to our lifestyle to manage calories and energy by having shakes or nothing for breakfast, and limiting snacks.

#3 – Select The Ingredients You Have / Like

Every AdapNation Food Diary Meal has all of it’s main ingredients tagged and itemised, making for a truly user friendly and helpful means of narrowing down meal ideas. 

E.g. Say you really like Sweet Potato and Chicken. Or, you have Salmon that needs to be used tonight. Or, you want ideas on how else to work Eggs into your meals. Or, creative ways to use gut-healthy veggies such as Leeks and Broccoli. 

Whatever your reasoning is, just start typing or selecting the ingredients you have or are interested in incorporating into your next meal. You can select as many ingredients as you like, but just bear in mind that the results will only show meals with ALL the selected ingredients, so results will narrow down quickly as more ingredients are added. 

#4 – Add In Other Filters

If you’d like to search for meals with other characteristics, you can easily do that too. Other available filters can be selected using the upper Drop Down Menu (4). They include:

1. CUISINE – Where possible, all AdapNation Food Diary meals have been attributed to a Cuisine. They will either be a classic, or a take on that cuisine, using similar ingredients or processes.
2. DIET TYPE – This is useful if you have allergies, or you are trying to follow a certain diet protocol. Expect to find things like Gluten Free, Lactose Free, Low Fat, Low Carb etc.
3. MEAL TYPE – This filter can help narrow down the type of Meal, such as Burger, Bake, Condiment, Beverage, Pasta Curry etc.

And VOILA!

in the example above of Medium Effort Dinners with Chicken & Sweet Potato, Butler returns all matches from the AdapNation Food Diary, immediately! Remove or add a filter/ingredient, and the list of meals change.

From here, you can scroll through the options, that include calories and macros for the example portion/plate size. Once your appetite is whetted, click into any of the meals to get the following from the AdapNation Food Diary:

1. Calories (with smaller Portion option)
2. Macronutrient values
3. A Description of the meal, including taste, experience and other interesting insights
4. Full and Specific Ingredient List
5. List of Wellness Benefits derived from the chosen Ingredients
6. Several Photo’s 

#A & #B – Couple Other Useful Features

#A – By pressing the ‘x’ buttons you remove the associated Filter

#B – By Pressing the Down Arrow you will show all available filters in one press. By Pressing the Up Arrow all filters are removed and can be re-selected from the ‘Select A Food Filter’ Drop down Menu. 

What To Expect From AdapNation Food Diary & Butler In The Future

At AdapNation, we aim to add 2-4 new AdapNation Food Diary Meals to the platform every month. The underlying tenants of all meals follow the IIFYM+ Thrive eating approach. 

You can continue to expect diversity in ingredients, meal ideas, cuisine, meal time and diet type in our AdapNation Food Diary Meals, whilst keeping true to speed, ease, optimal nutrition and amazing flavours. 

Naturally, this means that the AdapNation Butler tool will continue to expand in it’s recommendations, so do continue to use it for new inspiration and helping increase your repertoire in the kitchen.

Please Provide Feedback & Meal/Feature Requests

We’ll also be looking to expand the the features of AdapNation Butler over the coming months, to continue to get closer to what makes most sense and adds most value to you, the user. 

In order to do so, we’d love to hear your feedback as you get going with the service. If there are Meal Ideas, Ingredients or Diet Types you’d like better represented, then please let us know and we’ll get creative!

Moreover, if there are features that would help turning inspiration into real-world kitchen action, then please do let us know. We’re all ears. 👂 

#BeYourBest