Editorial Policy

Calorie Apps is an independent review publication ranking calorie-tracking apps for consumers and clinicians. This page documents how content is researched, written, reviewed, and corrected — and the lines we do not cross.

Last updated: 2026-04-28

1. Independence and funding

Calorie Apps accepts no payment, equity, gifts, free product, sponsored placement, paid review, or product loaner from any calorie-tracking-app publisher in exchange for coverage or favorable ranking. We hold no affiliate accounts with any app publisher we review.

Apps are not informed in advance of their ranking position. Apps are not given an opportunity to review or modify scoring before publication.

2. Authorship and review

Every cornerstone page (rankings, individual reviews, and head-to-head comparisons) carries a named author and a separate named clinical reviewer in the byline. The author roster and clinical reviewer roster are documented at the editorial board page.

Author assignments are deterministic — the same slug consistently maps to the same author across builds — to make accountability auditable.

3. Methodology

Rankings reflect performance on the 90-day real-world user study described on the methodology page. The rubric, weights, participants, dish set, and validation protocol are public. We re-test monthly.

Scoring uses a fixed seven-category rubric with documented weights. Weights are reviewed annually and any change is published in our update log.

4. Source standards

Quantitative claims about app behavior come from our own protocol observations or from primary sources (USDA FoodData Central, Open Food Facts, app publisher methodology documents). Claims about dietary-assessment accuracy in general are cited to peer-reviewed primary literature with DOIs where available.

We do not cite findings from unpublished, anonymous, or otherwise unverifiable studies, even where this would be useful for narrative momentum.

5. Conflicts of interest

No member of the editorial board holds equity in any app publisher we review. Members of the editorial board with prior employment relationships at app publishers recuse themselves from coverage of those apps. Recusals are recorded in the relevant article footers.

6. AI-assisted content

Translations of English-language editorial content into other locales are produced with AI assistance and reviewed by editors. Original-language editorial content, including rankings, scoring, and review write-ups, is written and edited by named human staff.

7. Corrections

If you spot an error in any Calorie Apps content, please contact editorial@calorie-apps.com. Material corrections are logged on the corrections page and noted in the affected article. We treat correction requests from app publishers, named users, and named clinicians with equal weight.

8. Affiliate and commercial disclosure

See our affiliate disclosure. Short version: we do not run affiliate links to the apps we rank.

Contact

Editorial: editorial@calorie-apps.com