AI meal planning is coming to MyFitnessPal, but you’ll have to shell out for it
Summary
- The popular food tracking app MyFitnessPal has acquired AI meal-planning startup Intent and will soon launch a ‘Premium Plus’ subscription with personalized meal plans based on user preferences, dietary restrictions, and calorie goals.
- Beyond personalized meal plans, the Premium Plus tier will also offer automated grocery lists and a more efficient method for logging food intake, plus ingredient ordering from major e-retailers.
- This new tier, launching later this spring, will be priced at $100 per year, a $20 increase over the current Premium plan.
If you actively work out, are trying to lose weight, ensuring that you’re getting the right amount of macro and micro nutrients, or just simply trying to log your eating habits, you’ve definitely heard of MyFitnessPal. The app is the cream of the crop when it comes to food and exercise tracking, offering free and paid plans with varying functionality.
With its free version, users get to log and track their weight, food, and exercise, track their daily steps, try out meal plans, and more. Its paid plans, on the other hand, include advanced features like barcode scanning, custom macro tracking, no ads, custom workouts, and a lot more.
The application was acquired by private equity firm Francisco Partners back in 2020, from Under Armour, with Francisco Partners now making acquisitions of its own too. In a bid to bolster the app’s AI offering, MyFitnessPal has acquired AI meal-planning startup Intent.
The previously undisclosed acquisition reportedly closed last year for an undisclosed sum, while Intent’s suite of features began making their way to MyFitnessPal in the fall of 2024 (at least on the back end). The new AI-powered features will be offered under a new ‘Premium Plus’ plan later this spring, and users can currently sign up for a waitlist to be notified.
Premium Plus comes at a $20 premium
The new AI plan will be available in the US, UK, Canada, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand, at least initially, boasting the ability to generate personalized meal plans while taking the user’s calorie targets, dietary and protein preferences, household size, and allergens into consideration. Elsewhere, the plan will also unlock automated grocery lists to simplify shopping, offer a more streamlined way of food logging (unclear how), alongside ingredient ordering in partnership with “major e-retailers.”
According to the report, the app typically sees a “large jump” in subscribers every spring, which could be the reason why the app is currently holding back on the features. Once available, the new Premium Plus plan will reportedly set users back by $100 annually. For reference, the app’s current ‘Premium’ plan costs $80 annually.
