Each week we pick a good spread of foods, lean on a couple of cuisines so the week cooks well together, and don't repeat too much of last week's list. Then we keep swapping things in and out until everyone at your table is getting what they need. You cook whatever you like.
Say it's you, your partner, and a six-year-old who has made up his mind about broccoli. You add each person with their age and anything that matters about how they eat: a diet, a dislike, a pregnancy. You can set a weekly budget, keep a few staples you always buy, and give anyone a calorie goal or a protein target if they have one. Most people don't need to. The defaults come from each person's age and stage.
Mirabelly works out what each person needs for the week: calories, protein, fiber, and the vitamins and minerals a week most often misses, like iron, calcium and folate. A six-year-old's targets are a six-year-old's, not a share of the family's. Pregnancy and nursing get their own. Nobody gets averaged into one household number. The targets come from the USDA's dietary reference intakes.
Then it builds the list. It starts from your staples and what's already in the fridge, picks a good spread of foods across a couple of cuisines so the week cooks well together, leans the produce toward what's in season, and avoids repeating too much of last week. It keeps swapping things in and out until everyone at your table is getting what they need, all from one shared basket. That takes about half a minute. It plans most of your calories on purpose and leaves room for the rest: birthday cake, Friday takeout, the good chips. Building the basket instead of writing you a menu is where Mirabelly parts ways with meal-planning apps.
The list is grouped the way the store is, so you can shop it top to bottom. Next to it is a scorecard: one row per person, each nutrient marked met, marginal or low. If the six-year-old's iron came up short this week, it says so, by name, instead of hiding it in a family average.
Cross off a food and the list re-balances without it. Shuffle for a genuinely different list that covers the same nutrition. Lean the week Italian or Korean. Turn the in-season lean up or down. A diet or a dislike belongs to one person, so your daughter going vegetarian doesn't take the chicken off everyone else's list.
Set a weekly number and the list aims near it. If a week runs over, you see a plain banner saying so, and by how much, before you shop. Nutrition comes first, so a tight week can run over, and you'll always know. For context, it shows how your week compares with the USDA's food-plan figure for a household like yours.
Every list comes with a page of recipe ideas that use what you bought, linking out to the sites they came from. Nothing is assigned to a day and nothing is required. The list already covers the week. A recipe is a good idea for Tuesday, not an order.
Every food Mirabelly can put on your list is in a curated catalog of whole ingredients and pantry staples, each with nutrition data from USDA FoodData Central behind it. It's deliberately far smaller than a supermarket, so every item is one we can stand behind, and it grows over time.
Targets come from USDA dietary reference intakes; per-food amounts come from USDA FoodData Central. How long a list takes is a typical figure, not a promise. Mirabelly is in invite-only beta.
Mirabelly is in invite-only beta. Request an invite and we'll email you when a spot opens.
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