ChatGPT Meal Plan Flops Nutritionist Weighs In

Up until now, I’ve resisted using ChatGPT, mainly because I’m terrified I’ll love it too much and be even more addicted to my phone. Everyone around me swears by it, like my best friend who relies on it for healthy recipe ideas. She is among many using OpenAI’s chatbot to plan weekly meals. You merely ask the bot to whip up a meal plan that caters to your dietary needs and budget, and within seconds, it delivers a handful of recipe ideas along with a detailed grocery list.

Considering the astronomical prices of goods right now (the cost of a dozen eggs is up 303 percent since 2019, and frozen orange juice has more than doubled), it makes sense that people are doing whatever they can to save. AI technology has its downsides, though. ChatGPT is known to spread misinformation, and we recently learned that it can have serious environmental consequences because of the unconscionable amounts of water it uses to keep its servers running efficiently. According to The Washington Post, sending the bot a 100-word message, roughly the length of this paragraph, uses approximately 17 ounces of water. For reference, that’s slightly more than the liquid volume in your favorite grande-sized Starbucks drink.

(Can you guess how many grandes it would take to input this entire article into ChatGPT? Look for the answer at the end.)

Aside from holding on to some money, people seem to really like ChatGPT’s meal recommendations. I eventually caved and decided to put the trend to the test to see how good of a nutritionist-slash-chef ChatGPT would really be. I also interviewed a sports nutritionist and a biomedical data scientist with expertise in artificial intelligence to get their two cents.

Join me as I walk you through my week of following ChatGPT’s meal advice.

My Grocery Budget Is $125 Per Week. Here’s What the Bot Suggested I Make.

I have a grocery budget of $125 per week. I’ll be feeding myself, my husband, and our very cute rescue dog Ollie, whom we already spoil with fresh, human-grade dog food. My husband eats pretty much anything, while I consume a strict gluten-free (GF) diet.

My ChatGPT Prompt and Answer

I typed the following prompt into ChatGPT to get my personalized grocery list:

I want a meal plan for a week filled with delicious and nutrient-dense, gluten-free recipes. Please provide meals for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. Beverages like smoothies are also okay to include. I have a budget of $125 and can only purchase my ingredients from Trader Joe’s. Please show me the meal plan, separating it by day from Monday to Sunday, with breakfast, lunch, dinner, and one snack listed for each day. Add in treats for my dog Ollie. Then, please show me a list of all the specific grocery items I need to buy from Trader Joe’s, including the specific item name of each individual product, so I know exactly which items to look for. Please include the prices next to each item on the grocery list. Please include the actual item names from the Trader Joe’s store in my grocery list, but not in the meal plan itself.

Here’s the one-week meal plan ChatGPT recommended:

Monday

• Breakfast: Greek yogurt with sliced banana and a sprinkle of cinnamon
• Lunch: Quinoa salad with mixed greens, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, and a lemon-tahini dressing
• Dinner: Grilled chicken breast with roasted sweet potatoes and steamed broccoli
• Snack: Apple slices with almond butter

Tuesday

• Breakfast: Oatmeal topped with mixed berries and a drizzle of honey
• Lunch: Leftover grilled chicken breast sliced over a bed of mixed greens with balsamic vinaigrette
• Dinner: Stir-fried shrimp with frozen stir-fry vegetables and cauliflower rice
• Snack: Carrot sticks with hummus

Wednesday

• Breakfast: Smoothie with spinach, frozen mango, chia seeds, and unsweetened almond milk
• Lunch: Tuna salad (canned tuna, mayo, celery) served in lettuce wraps
• Dinner: Beef and vegetable kebabs with a side of quinoa
• Snack: Rice cakes with peanut butter

Thursday

• Breakfast: Scrambled eggs with sautéed spinach and gluten-free toast
• Lunch: Leftover beef and vegetable kebabs with a side salad
• Dinner: Baked salmon with roasted Brussels sprouts and quinoa
• Snack: Cucumber slices with guacamole

Friday

• Breakfast: Chia pudding made with unsweetened almond milk, topped with sliced strawberries
• Lunch: Chicken and vegetable stir-fry with cauliflower rice
• Dinner: Grilled turkey burgers (no bun) with a side of roasted sweet potato fries
• Snack: Mixed nuts

Saturday

• Breakfast: Gluten-free pancakes topped with fresh blueberries and a drizzle of maple syrup
• Lunch: Leftover turkey burger patty with a side salad
• Dinner: Vegetable and chickpea curry served over quinoa
• Snack: Greek yogurt with a handful of granola

Sunday

• Breakfast: Smoothie bowl with blended açai, banana, and almond milk, topped with granola and coconut flakes
• Lunch: Leftover vegetable and chickpea curry
• Dinner: Roast chicken with a side of steamed green beans and mashed sweet potatoes
• Snack: Sliced pear with a handful of walnuts

At first glance, my resounding thought was: I am going to be very hungry. The recipes seemed healthy, but left something to be desired (like carbs). I got over my initial skepticism and screenshotted the itemized grocery list the bot gave me. I drove to my local Trader Joe’s with a couple of reusable shopping bags in tow.

ChatGPT had assured me that I wouldn’t spend over $125. (Photo: Grocery list screenshots: Julia Ries; Collage; Ayana Underwood/Canva)

ChatGPT Left Out Many Items I Needed. I Went Over Budget.

A few of the recipes ChatGPT shared look similar to the meals and snacks my husband and I already eat—like salmon and Brussels sprouts, smoothies, eggs, and toast—and I was amped to add rice cakes and gluten-free pancakes to my diet. Plus, Ollie was wagging like crazy when I returned home with chicken jerky treats. But most ingredients—like the cucumbers, a veggie I detest, and chia pudding, which I’ve somehow never had—differed from what’s typically on our weekly menu.

My trip to TJ’s, from start to finish, lasted an hour, mainly because I had never bought many of these items before and therefore had no idea where in the store they were located. The larger dilemma was that a handful of ingredients needed to make the meals ChatGPT suggested were not budgeted for or included in the grocery list the bot sent me.

For example, it suggested I eat toast with eggs for breakfast on Thursday morning, but didn’t tell me to buy bread. The same happened with sauce for the stir-fry, quinoa for the salad, and salmon dishes, almond milk for the chia pudding, guacamole, honey, and Greek yogurt for my snacks. It also lacked all the basic ingredients you need to cook (like olive oil or butter). And Brussels sprouts were listed twice on my shopping list.

What I’m trying to say is: ChatGPT’s meal plan and ingredient list were far from perfect. It was missing items needed to prep various recipes, prices were inaccurate, and two items (the pears and frozen açai bowl) weren’t in stock. My receipt totaled $160–about $35 over my desired budget. However, it would have been far higher had I bought all of the ingredients I needed, but weren’t included on the shopping list. Fortunately, I already had most of them at home.

ChatGPT led me to overspend. Bummer. (Photo: Julia Ries)

I Made ChatGPT’s Honey-Berry Oatmeal

Believe it or not, the recipe I was most excited to make was Tuesday’s breakfast: oatmeal topped with mixed berries and a drizzle of honey (that I subbed with maple syrup). I love a bowl of hot oats and fruit to start the day. It’s delicious and keeps me satiated until lunchtime.

A hearty breakfast. (Photo: Julia Ries)

This Meal Plan Is Very Restrictive and Will Negatively Affect Athletic Performance, According to a Nutritionist

I was dying to know what a professional dietitian thought of ChatGPT’s food recs, so I hopped on a Zoom call with Susan Kleiner, a sports nutritionist. Her take? “If you eat like this, you’re going to feel like shit.”

I am a 36-year-old 5’6” female who weighs about 130 pounds. I’m physically active: I take Ollie on two hour-long strolls every day (like I said, spoiled) and I vigorously exercise (a jog, spin class, or hot yoga session) for about 30 to 45 minutes five days a week. I hike most weekends. According to Kleiner, I should be consuming roughly 1,950 calories every day to maintain my weight, with an average macronutrient distribution of 40% carbohydrates, 30% fat, and 30% protein. But ChatGPT had me eating about 1,200 calories a day.

“What ChatGPT gave you is the classic female restrictive dietary pattern,” Kleiner says. I feel like this was especially true because the bot saw the words “gluten-free” in my prompt. ChatGPT crawls what’s promoted online, Kleiner says. “And so that’s what it draws from.”

ChatGPT already knew I was a woman, as I briefly used it earlier this year to craft a professional bio. Besides, the bulk of GF content out there is likely from women (women are more inclined to follow a GF diet than men, research shows). It can be a pretty restrictive diet if you’re not careful. That’s what ChatGPT saw, so that’s what I got.

If you eat like this, you’re going to feel like shit.

That’s not the only way the meal plan fell short. It didn’t provide enough veggies, dairy, and grains, Kleiner says, and if I adhered to it, I wouldn’t come close to meeting my daily vitamin and mineral needs.

The lack of protein, which plays a crucial role in repairing muscle and building strong bones, especially for women, alarmed her. And I’d probably wind up constipated since I’d be ingesting too little fiber. That might also wreck my microbiome and set off a cascade of inflammation in my body, says Kleiner. She says I probably wouldn’t sleep well because I’d be so underfed. “You’re setting yourself up for failure on a diet like this.”

As such, she noted that I could also expect my athletic performance to suffer. I likely won’t have enough energy to get out the door. Even if I do, she explains that I won’t have enough fuel in my body to reach a high enough intensity to reap the benefits of my workouts. I asked what my recovery would look like on this diet. Her response?

“You won’t recover.”

Which Is Better: a Nutritionist or ChatGPT?

According to Kleiner, while tempting, this trend highlights why working with a (human) professional is so important. They can assess your overall health and activity levels to craft tailored meal plans that will help you hit your athletic goals, prevent chronic diseases, and be a happier, healthier person overall.

It’s not a human, it’s a robot spitting out words.

The bot doesn’t think critically about what I, Julia, need to eat. As Dr. Jonathan Chen, the faculty director for medical education in artificial intelligence at Stanford Medicine, says, ChatGPT basically reads the Internet and then copies and pastes whatever it finds (hence the 1,200-calorie diet). Chen says AI is pretty good at answering simple, straightforward questions, but also makes things up and pulls false information from the Internet.

“It’s not a human, it’s a robot spitting out words,” he shares. When I asked if he’d ever recommend it for meal planning, he said he wouldn’t use it for medical advice, in general. “Don’t plan your health around it,” he says.

Will I Use ChatGPT to Meal Plan Again?

The truth: probably not. I want my food to energize me so I can work, exercise, care for Ollie, read, and hang out with my family and friends. ChatGPT’s plan just won’t fuel me properly. Besides, spending an hour at the grocery store shopping for ingredients I wasn’t entirely jazzed about wasn’t exactly my most efficient trip to Trader Joe’s.

That said, the bot did provide a good jumping-off point. For example, I’m a big fan of turkey burgers and sweet potato fries (my suggested Friday dinner), but I also want recipes that are more nutritious (and creative) than breadless patties with fries. So, I might use the bot to shop for base ingredients, but then I’ll add my own touches to create a meal I’m excited about. This is where AI and tools like ChatGPT shine, Chen tells me. For example, these are the tweaks I’d make to the turkey burger meal: turkey burgers (with gluten-free buns, cheese, avocado, lettuce, and tomatoes), sweet potato fries (with ketchup), and a side salad with veggies and green goddess dressing.

Kleiner says the oatmeal breakfast is a fine start, but it would be excellent if I added nuts or seeds plus a dab of Greek yogurt—as you can see, I followed this advice.

AI models can generate ideas you may not have thought of (like pears paired with walnuts), but it’s always smart to flesh them out or validate their advice with reliable, trusted sources such as nutritionists or dietitians.

“Use it to brainstorm,” Chen said. But that’s it.

(As for the answer to that trivia above: 22 grande-sized drinks. That’s how much water it would take to input this article into ChatGPT. Yikes.)

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