How to use Thrive Nutrition App

Search for a food

Thrive covers 733 plant foods. Type a plant into the search box on the home page, for example kale, lentils or pumpkin seeds. Results appear as you type. If you misspell something, Thrive suggests what you probably meant (“Did you mean…”).

You can also type a nutrient, such as “iron” or “vitamin K”, to see foods rich in it.

Open a food card

Tap any result to open its card. The card is headed “[Food] nutrition per 100 g” and its first line names the official data row the figures come from. It shows a photo, names in other languages, and the full nutrient table. You can also browse every plant A–Z under Plants. Comparing Thrive with a tracker? See Thrive and Cronometer, Cronometer alternatives by need or Thrive and MyFitnessPal: Thrive is a free per-100 g reference, not a food diary.

Read the per-100 g numbers

Every figure is for 100 g of the food, so you can compare foods fairly. A handful of nuts is about 30 g, so it gives roughly a third of the numbers shown.

Where the numbers come from (and “closest match”)

Every value comes from an official food table: UK CoFID or USDA FoodData Central. Each card names its source row.

Some plants have no exact row of their own. Their card shows a “Closest official match” badge above the table, naming the row the figures come from, so you always know when a value is borrowed from the nearest official entry. The same “closest match” note appears in Plate totals, rankings and exports.

What “% daily value” means

The percentage next to a value is the share of the UK daily reference (% NRV) that 100 g gives you. 50% means 100 g covers half of the reference amount for the day. It is a label guide, not a personal target. More on the % NRV page.

“% NRV (UK)” means the share of the UK Nutrient Reference Value: the reference amounts printed on UK food labels for vitamins and minerals. Hover, tap or focus the dotted “% NRV” heading on a food card to see this explanation. Energy, protein, carbs and fat use % RI (reference intake) instead, and nutrients with no UK reference show no percentage.

mg and µg

mg is a milligram (a thousandth of a gram). µg is a microgram, a thousandth of a milligram: 1 mg = 1,000 µg. Nutrients you need in tiny amounts, like B12, vitamin D and iodine, are shown in µg. Don’t compare raw numbers across units — use the %. Full answer in the FAQ.

Use the nutrient chips

On the home page, under the search box, you’ll find the Vitamins · minerals browser: every nutrient as a chip, grouped into Vitamins, Minerals and Fats & other. Tap a chip, for example Iron or Vitamin K, to open its page.

Read the rankings

Each nutrient page lists plant foods from richest to poorest, per 100 g. Tap any food to open its card. There are also per-100 g tables, for example iron and calcium, and rankings for iron, calcium, protein, fibre and vitamin C that name the source of every value and show “Closest official match” where it applies. How the data works: About our data.

Ideas

• Looking for iron? Open the Iron chip and pick two foods from the top ten for this week’s meals.
• Check the vitamin C list too — pairing iron-rich plants with vitamin C foods on the same plate is a classic combination.

Getting Plate

1. Open the Plate tab. If you don’t have Plate yet, a price card at the top shows both prices.
2. Further down the Plate screen, “What Plate adds” lists the five Plate tools with a small screenshot of each: plate and week totals, week plan to shopping list, Low on X?, recipe import and CSV/PDF export. Tap any of them to open a read-only preview that shows the tool working with clearly labelled example data from CoFID / USDA. The recipe import preview lets you switch between four example recipes (hummus bowl, overnight oats, tofu rice bowl, bean chilli). It runs the real importer on each: every line is in grams and matches a Thrive food, then you see the recipe totals and per-portion figures with % NRV (UK), or % RI for protein. The export preview is a sample table, not a download.
3. Tap “Get Plate”, choose monthly or yearly, then “Continue to payment”. Payment is handled securely by Stripe; Plate renews automatically and you can cancel any time.

Locked buttons and the upgrade screen

Without Plate, Plate buttons (such as “Add to Favourites”, “+ List” or “Add to plate”) and Plate pages show a short “Part of Plate” screen instead. It explains what that feature does and offers “Get Plate”. Nothing you were reading is lost: close it and you are back where you were.

On the Plate screen without Plate you still see what is on your plate and its two highest nutrients. The full results (every vitamin and mineral, energy, macros and week totals) sit behind an “Unlock with Plate” card.

Favourites

1. On any food card, tap “Add to Favourites” (the heart).
2. Find them all on the Plate screen under Favourites (or tap the Favourites chip in “More with Plate”).

Ideas

• Heart the 10 plants you eat most so they are one tap away.
• Keep a favourites set for travel snacks: nuts, seeds, dried fruit.

Shopping list

1. On a food card, tap “+ List”. The button changes to “On list”.
2. Open it from Plate → Shopping list. Tick items as you shop, sort by group, or clear ticked items.

Ideas

• After planning your week’s plates, add each plant with “+ List” and shop from one list.
• Sort by group so the list follows the aisles: fruit, veg, pulses, nuts.

Plates and totals

1. Open Plate: everything is on one screen. Search for plants at the top (or tap one of your favourites), or on a food card set the grams and tap “Add to plate”. Everything goes onto one plate; there are no meal slots to fill in.
2. Each food on the plate has its own card: use − and + to change the grams, or × to take it off. The coloured bar above the cards shows how the plate splits by weight.
3. Tap “Save plate” to keep it (it appears under Saved plates further down the same screen), or “Add to week” to save it and open the Week plan.
4. In Plate, “Totals vs UK NRV” shows every vitamin and mineral for the plate as a % of the UK reference.
5. With Plate, the “Highest on the plate” tiles are coloured by group, and each tile names its group in words: energy (orange), macronutrients (green), vitamins (yellow) and minerals (pink).
6. Under it, the “Low on…” box names the nutrient you are lowest on and lists the top plant foods for it.

Ideas

• Build a typical plate and check gaps such as B12, iodine or omega-3 (these are often low in plant foods; see B12 honesty).
• Swap one ingredient for a food from the “Low on…” list and watch the totals change.
• Tap “Save plate” when you are happy so it counts towards your week totals.

Low on X? — top plant foods for one nutrient

1. Open Low on something? from the “More with Plate” chips, or tap the link under the “Low on…” box.
2. Pick a nutrient and a portion size. Thrive ranks plant foods for it per 100 g and per portion, with the source on every row.
3. Below the list you’ll find pairings from the pairing guide, such as iron with a vitamin C food.

Week totals

1. Save a plate for each day.
2. In “Totals vs UK NRV”, tap “Last 7 saved plates” to see a per-day average for the week, nutrient by nutrient.

Ideas

• Plan a week of plates on Sunday, check the week view, then send the ingredients to your shopping list.
• A low day is fine — the week average shows the bigger picture.

Export as CSV or PDF

1. Under plate totals, week totals or a recipe, find the Export row.
2. Tap CSV (opens in any spreadsheet) or PDF (ready to print or share). The file is made on your device; nothing is uploaded.

Week plan → shopping list

1. Open Week plan from the “More with Plate” chips on the Plate screen.
2. For each day, pick saved plates, your recipes, smoothies or homemade recipes and tap “+ Add”.
3. The shopping list below adds up the same plant across the whole week, in grams, grouped by food type. Tap “Add all to shopping list”, or copy it as text to paste into a message or notes.

My recipes

1. Open Plate → My recipes. Name the recipe, set the servings and add plants by weight.
2. Thrive shows nutrition per 100 g and per serving. Tap “Save recipe”.

Ideas

• Save your usual porridge or curry once and see what one serving gives you.
• Save your favourite smoothie as a recipe so you can reuse it in seconds.

Import a recipe from text

1. In Plate → My recipes, open “Import a recipe from text” and paste a recipe’s ingredient list. A title and a line like “Serves 4” are read too.
2. Each line is matched only to plant foods in Thrive. Lines Thrive can’t match are listed for you, never guessed; if a line could mean more than one plant, pick the one you mean.
3. Check the amounts, then save it as one of your recipes.

Blender and juicer

1. Open Plate → Blender (smoothies) or Juicer (juices). Add plants and set grams.
2. See the mix’s totals, then tap “Save this mix”. Saved mixes appear under “Your mixes”.

Ideas

• Try a green smoothie with kale, banana and chia, then compare it with the juiced version.
• Add flax or chia to a smoothie to see the omega-3 jump.

iPhone or iPad (Safari)

1. Open thrivenutrition.app in Safari.
2. Tap the Share button (square with an arrow).
3. Scroll and tap “Add to Home Screen”, then “Add”.

Android (Chrome)

1. Open thrivenutrition.app in Chrome.
2. Tap the ⋮ menu at the top right.
3. Tap “Add to Home screen” or “Install app”, then confirm.

Windows (Microsoft Store)

On a Windows PC you can install Thrive from the Microsoft Store: Get it on Microsoft Store.

Android: use Chrome, not Samsung Internet

Installing from Samsung Internet (or another browser) can trigger a Google Play Protect warning: “This app was built for an older version of Android”. That comes from how that browser packages web apps, not from Thrive. If you see it, tap OK, remove that copy, open thrivenutrition.app in Chrome and install from there.

Good to know

Dark mode: tap the sun / moon / screen icon at the top of the app (or “Theme” in the footer) to switch between System, Light and Dark. System follows your phone’s setting, and your choice is remembered on this device.

If the app looks out of date, close and reopen it, or reload the page once.

Thrive is food data, not medical advice. See the FAQ and the % NRV guide.

Thrive Nutrition App (thrivenutrition.app) is not affiliated with the App Store app "Thrive Plate".

Questions or ideas? Email us at thrivenutritionapp@proton.me.