PlateJoy (YCS16) San Francisco http://platejoy.com We're building the personalized nutrition platform of the future and are looking for a health/nutrition focused generalist to join our team. Please email us at jobs@platejoy.com with a resume for more info. Thanks!

I studied neuroscience in college, so have tried to stay up to date on what we know about the biology of things like anxiety and depression (surprisingly, we know very little for sure). The "chemical imbalance" hypothesis that I was taught in college and that is widely accepted is increasingly being challenged. For example, is it possible that depression is a symptom of a larger inflammatory problem vs. its own disease? Inflammation caused by stress or undiagnosed food or environmental allergies? (People with allergies have a higher risk of depression and suicide, especially in the spring. Allergy shots can help.)

In terms of non-pharmaceuticals, here's what seems to be effective: B Complex vitamins (make sure to get methylcobalamin form of b12 included not cyano), sleep, meditation, exercise, social support, omega 3, vitamin D, probiotics (refrigerated, not gummy), not taking NSAIDS, not taking proton pump inhibitors or antacids, low carb/very little sugar.

Please provide sources for the more interesting / outrageous claims. Especially meditation, probiotics, PPIs link to depression or the specific low sugar diet. Good quality controlled trials on more than two handfuls of people.

Thanks for the feedback! We like to make sure we have enough new recipes for many months of using the service before allowing two categories to be combined, but you're welcome to hack it that way for now. Filet mignon was a glitch (we just fixed it) but the sausage is made of pork.

That's a great idea! You can create your new menu whenever you'd like (a few days in advance) so this idea will work fine.

Hello + thank you! It’s something we’re working on tackling programmatically, but right now this is really where our nutrition coaching comes into play. You'll get an email from yours in a few days, and they'll make suggestions for ingredients you’d like to substitute, or can find the best plan that can meet everyone’s needs. Personally, I’d recommend going more restrictive (like our gluten-free, vegetarian plan) and supplementing it if necessary with non-GF pasta and simple meat/poultry/fish in place of veg protein - often everyone finds something to like even with the restrictions, and you don’t have to be a short-order cook :)

Thanks for your feedback! It comes out to around $8-$10/month depending on what plan you choose. I hesitate to say this because I don't want to come across as too sales-y, but a customer told us last week that it's "the best money they've spent all year." There's a free trial today if you want to try it.

You can imagine my dismay at reading that book after I started this company, lol. ;) Good thing it's all about execution.

Hi! Glad you found the service useful. We now have a feature that lets you specify grocery store so that less exotic ingredients are shown if you live somewhere a bit more obscure (grew up in a small town myself, so I get it!) You can also print your shopping lists if you don't want to use the iOS or Android app. We have thousands of recipes in our database and constantly growing, so let me know if you ever want to come back and try it again for a few days.

Thanks for the kind words and feedback. We do have a free trial set up for everyone today (no cc required) if you want to check it out without paying anything.

You can sync with JawBone & FitBit, but not MFP (they're not accepting API requests this year). We do give you a full breakdown of nutritional info for each meal though, so you can always enter the macros in manually.