Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 14, 2026

Platebook is in a private beta. This is our interim privacy policy for the beta. It says, in plain words, what we collect, why, where it is kept, who helps us process it, and how you can see it or delete it. A full policy reviewed by our lawyers will replace it before the public beta, and we will ask you to read and accept that one too.

Platebook is run by FoodYouMe LLC, 582 20th St, Brooklyn, NY 11218 ("we", "us"). This policy covers the Platebook app at beta.platebook.co and our website at platebook.co.

The short version

  • Platebook holds health information: your conditions, allergies, diets, the foods you can and cannot eat, and what you log in your journal. We use it to show you foods and recipes that fit you. That is the product.
  • We do not sell your information. We do not show ads. We do not use advertising or analytics trackers in the app.
  • Your health information is stored in Google Cloud in the United States, under a Business Associate Agreement we have with Google.
  • When you describe your health in your own words, that text is sent to an AI model run by Google so we can turn it into entries on your profile. Emails, phone numbers, addresses and long numbers are removed first.
  • You can download everything in your profiles, or delete your account and all of its health information, at any time from Settings, then Data & privacy.

What we collect

Your account

  • Your email address.
  • Your password, if you sign up with one. Google's sign-in service (Firebase Authentication) stores it in protected form on our behalf. We never see it.
  • If you sign in with Google, Google tells us your email address. Google may also share your name and profile picture with our sign-in service. We do not copy them into the Platebook database.
  • Which version of this policy and of our Terms you accepted, and when.

Health information you give us

Everything in this section is information about your health. We treat all of it as sensitive.

  • Conditions you tell us about, the phase of a condition you are in (for example an elimination or reintroduction phase), and conditions you type that we do not yet recognise.
  • Allergies and how severe they are, including allergies you type that we do not yet recognise, and pollen sensitivities.
  • Diets you follow and how strictly, including diets you type that we do not yet recognise.
  • Foods: which foods are safe for you, which you avoid, which you do not like, and foods you have chosen to show or hide.
  • Food trials: the food, the dates, the amounts you tolerated, and how the trial went.
  • Your journal: meals and foods you log (what, when and how much), symptoms and reactions (what you felt, how bad it was, when, and which food you suspect), check-ins (how you feel, whether you are in a flare), and any notes you write.
  • Body measurements (weight, body-fat percentage, build and activity level), if an earlier version of the app asked you for them. The app no longer asks.
  • Recipes you save, dismiss or react to, and recipes you write yourself.
  • Meal plans and shopping lists, if you made them before we switched meal planning off for the beta.
  • Things we do not recognise yet. If you type a condition, allergy or diet that is not in our catalogue, we save it as you wrote it, and someone at Platebook reviews it so we can link it to the right entry. Until it is linked, we record it but cannot screen foods for it, and the app tells you so.
  • What Platebook works out from this. We compute which foods and recipes are safe for you, which foods may be linked to your symptoms, and nutrient targets. These results are derived from your health information and are health information too.

Household members

You can add profiles for other people you cook or shop for, such as a partner, a parent or a child. A profile holds a name or nickname, the relationship to you, an optional date of birth, and the same kinds of health information listed above, about that person. If you add someone else's information, please make sure they (or, for a child, their parent or guardian) are happy for you to do so. Everyone on an account is managed by the account holder, who can see and delete every profile on it.

Feedback you send

When you send feedback from inside the app, we store what you write, the screen you were on (as a page type, not a link to a record), and whether you said we may email you about it. Please do not put more health detail in feedback than you need to. Feedback is kept separately from your profiles: see "Deleting your information" below.

How you use the app

  • A record that the app was opened, linked to your account, so we can count active testers. It carries nothing else.
  • Error reports. If the app crashes, it sends us the error message, the technical stack trace, and the page type you were on. Page addresses are stripped of record identifiers first.
  • Server and security logs. Like any web service, our servers record requests: the address requested, the time, your IP address and browser. When you read or change health records, we keep an audit record of which account did it, when, and from where. We keep a coded (hashed) form of your IP address in these audit records.
  • Information kept on your device. The app stores your sign-in session and a few settings (for example, which journal option you used last) in your browser. Signing out clears them. We do not use advertising cookies or tracking pixels.

On our website (platebook.co)

  • If you join the waitlist, we collect your email address.
  • Our website host, Vercel, counts page visits on platebook.co for us (Vercel Web Analytics). This runs only on the public website, never inside the app.

Why we use it

  • To run Platebook for you: to screen foods and recipes against your conditions, allergies and diets, to keep your journal, to run food trials, and to look for patterns between what you eat and how you feel.
  • To keep the service safe and working: to find and fix errors, to protect accounts, and to keep a record of who accessed health information.
  • To run the beta: to count active testers, to read your feedback, and to email you about the beta and about your account.

We do not use your health information for advertising or marketing, and we do not sell it or share it with anyone for their own purposes.

We do look at information inside Platebook to fix problems you report, to check that safety screening is working (for example, if a recipe was shown to someone it should not have been), and to understand how the beta is going. Only people at Platebook with administrator access can do this.

The AI features

When you describe your health in your own words (for example during sign-up, or when you tell us about a change on your Protocol page), we send that text to an AI model so it can match what you wrote to conditions, allergies and diets we know about. What it finds is added to your profile, where you can see, change or remove it.

  • What is sent: the words you typed, and the relationship of the person it is about (for example "my daughter"), never their name. Before sending, we remove email addresses, phone numbers, web addresses, street addresses, and long numbers such as ID numbers. Dates are kept, because they tell us when something started. A name you type yourself is not removed.
  • Who runs the model: Google, through its Vertex AI service in our own Google Cloud project, covered by our Business Associate Agreement with Google. Today the model is Google's Gemini. Some background features use Anthropic's Claude, also run by Google inside our Google Cloud project; those receive counts and food names, not your words, your name or your email.
  • Where: we use Google's global AI endpoint, so Google may process these requests in a data centre outside the United States.
  • What is kept: we do not store the text you send to the model or its reply. We keep a record that a request was made for a profile, its size and its cost, for 90 days. We have switched off the Google setting that keeps a short-term copy of Gemini requests.
  • Training: we do not use your information to train AI models, and we have not given Google permission to use it to train theirs.

We also use AI services from OpenAI and Anthropic directly, but only to process public recipe and food information when we build our food catalogue. Those systems cannot reach your account or health information.

Who processes your information

We use a small number of companies to run Platebook. Each gets only what it needs.

  • Google Cloud stores and processes all of your account and health information: our database (Cloud SQL), our servers (Cloud Run), our logs and error reports (Cloud Logging and Error Reporting), and database copies (Cloud Storage). It does this under a Business Associate Agreement and a Data Processing Agreement we accepted on August 9, 2026. Our database and servers are in Google's us-central1 region, in Iowa, United States.
  • Google Vertex AI runs the AI features described above, under the same agreement.
  • Google Firebase Authentication handles sign-up and sign-in. It holds your email address, your protected password or Google sign-in, and sends account emails such as email verification and password reset. Those emails contain your email address and a link, never health information.
  • Vercel hosts the app's code files and our public website. When you open the app, your browser downloads those files from Vercel, so Vercel sees your IP address and browser type. Vercel never receives your health information: the app talks to our Google Cloud servers directly. We do not have a Business Associate Agreement with Vercel, because it does not handle health information.
  • Buttondown runs our waitlist and our email list for beta news. It receives your email address only, never health information, and never anything about your use of the app. We do not have a Business Associate Agreement with Buttondown, for the same reason.
  • Recipe websites. Recipe photos load directly from the website that published the recipe. Your browser contacts that site, so it sees your IP address and browser type. It is not told which page of Platebook you were on.

We may also share information if the law requires it (for example, a valid court order), to protect someone's safety, or as part of a sale or merger of our business. If that happens, we will tell you before your information becomes subject to a different policy.

Where it is stored, and how we protect it

  • Your account and health information is stored in Google Cloud in the United States (see above). AI requests may be processed outside the United States, as described above.
  • Information is encrypted when it travels between your device and our servers, and when it is stored.
  • Each account can reach only its own records. This is enforced inside the database, not only by the app.
  • Access to health information is recorded in an audit log.
  • Only people at Platebook who need it have administrator access.

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your information, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.

Seeing, changing and deleting your information

  • See it: Settings, then Data & privacy, then Export your data, downloads a file with your account and every profile on it: conditions, allergies, diets, food statuses, trials, journal entries, body measurements, recipes and the rest of the health information listed above. It does not include your feedback or our security logs. Email us if you want those.
  • Change it: you can edit or remove almost everything directly in the app. Email us for anything you cannot.
  • Delete a profile: deleting a household member's profile permanently deletes that profile's health information.
  • Delete your account: Settings, then Data & privacy, then Delete your account. This permanently deletes, straight away, your account, every profile on it, and all of their health information from our database, and then removes your sign-in.

What stays after you delete your account

We want to be exact about this:

  • Audit records. We keep the security record of activity on your account, and one record that the account was deleted at your request, which includes your email address. We keep these to show who accessed health information and when.
  • Feedback you sent stays unless you ask us to delete it. Email us and we will.
  • The record that the app was opened stays, linked to an account ID that no longer points to anyone.
  • AI usage records (which profile, size and cost, with no text) are deleted after 90 days.
  • Logs age out under Google Cloud's standard log retention.
  • Database copies. We sometimes make a full copy of the database to test that we can restore it. These copies are kept in Google Cloud Storage and are deleted automatically after 30 days.
  • Our waitlist and beta email list at Buttondown is separate. Use the unsubscribe link in any email, or email us, to be removed.

Your rights

Wherever you live, you can ask us to tell you what we hold about you, to give you a copy, to correct it, or to delete it, and you can withdraw your consent to us using your health information by deleting your account. Some laws give you these rights specifically, including Washington's My Health My Data Act, Nevada's consumer health data law, and California's privacy laws. We will not treat you differently for using them.

To make a request, email hello@platebook.co from the address on your account. We may need to confirm it is you. We will reply within 30 days.

Children

Platebook accounts are for adults. You must be 18 or older to create one, as our Terms say. An adult may add a profile for a child in their household and manage it for them. We do not knowingly let anyone under 18 hold an account. If you think a child has created one, email us and we will delete it.

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy, we change the date at the top. If the change matters, the app will show you the new version the next time you open it and ask you to accept it before you carry on. We will not use your information in a new way that this policy does not describe without asking you first.

Contact us

Questions, requests or worries: email hello@platebook.co, or write to FoodYouMe LLC, 582 20th St, Brooklyn, NY 11218.