Releasing nooch.app

2026-09-01

I finally did it. After countless hours of collecting ingredient data for different personal projects, I have finally turned my little data collection into an app. And it will be released on my 9-year anniversary of eating whole food plant-based: 1st September 2026.

For the past 10 years or so I have been collecting lists of plant ingredients in various file structures: simple lists in the Notes app, category folders with detailed yaml metadata files along with a custom backend, json files, then turned it into an sqlite DB in between, went back to yaml files. I am sure I am forgetting about some steps now. It has been the ultimate developer trap in action, really.

I have had the vision to create my very own food tracking/recipe/grocery list app for a long time now. Especially, since starting to eat plant-based in 2017 and seeing potential for existing apps. I must say, I have been very happy with the bring grocery app since first downloading it in late 2015 and I still see no reason to try to compete with them (they even have a web app!). In terms of a recipe app, I have a pretty clear vision what I would want to build, but I need to develop that idea further at some point. After finally clearing my mind about scope, I have been entirely focussing on the plant-based food tracking app aspect for a bit over a year now.

Starting out, I called my little personal project simply „Eat the Rainbow app“. Unfortunately, the beautiful URL eattherainbow.app had already been taken when I was ready to look for URLs. So I came up with the brilliant (if I may say so myself) name nooch.app – hinting at its nutrition-focus and one of the most nutritious foods on the planet: nutritional yeast aka ”nooch“. Plus, it is a cute name for my baby too.

My vision for nooch.app has always been about seeing plant images that are added as you track them. I have gone back to trying to draw icons myself over the years. But since I am not very good at drawing myself (yet!), I have used AI ^[1] to create the first set of plant drawings^[2]. I think they are fine for proving the concept, but I will certainly explore giving ingredients a more unique art style at some point.

The second big idea behind nooch.app is getting intuitive nutrition tips (but without the need to measure how many grams of carrot you have actually put in that dish!). I have never really understood the calorie- and macronutrient-tracking culture anyway. For me it‘s about fibre, iron, calcium, selenium, phytonutrients, etc. etc. just as much as it is about getting enough protein and calories.

Over the past nine years of eating a whole food plant-based diet, I have found some brilliant ideas that help to intuitively eat plant-based for optimal nutrition

• Dr. Greger‘s daily dozen
• 30 plants a week
• eat all colours of the rainbow (ie. a healthy diversity of phytonutrients etc.)
• tricks like „eat 3 walnuts a day“, „eat a teaspoon of turmeric with a pinch of pepper a day“, „eat cooked cruciferous vegetables with a pinch of freshly ground mustard seeds“, „pair iron-rich foods with vitamin C rich foods“, …

I am still working on incorporating the essence of all these concepts into nooch.app, so expect incremental updates later this year or early next year.

Until then: Have fun trying new foods and eating the rainbow with nooch.app!