Pros and cons of a ChatGPT weight loss meal plan

• I asked ChatGPT to create a meal plan after seeing a TikToker doing it in a viral video.
• A dietitian, Hannah Whittaker, found that the AI ​​tool was helpful for thinking up new meal ideas.
• But Whittaker said it can miss out on food groups, putting a person at risk for nutrient deficiencies.

“So I go to ChatGPT and ask him to create a meal plan that is endometriosis friendly and good for hormonal imbalances,” said one TikToker in a video with 3.4 million views.

ChatGPT is an AI tool that has created a huge hype in recent months for its human-like ability to answer questions and complete tasks provided to @mellyssalise with products. She tweaked the meal plan by asking ChatGPT to change her calorie count and eliminate ingredients she didn’t like.

After a few more questions and answers, she was left with a week-long meal plan that she was happy with.

“This thing is so smart,” he said.

But despite being trained with massive amounts of information from books to scientific journals and news articles, ChatGPT cannot be trusted to provide safe meal plans for you to follow, dietician Hannah Whittaker told Insider.

“As a dietitian, we’re the only ones who are evidence-based and bound by law to give you advice,” she said.

Both Whittaker and I asked the tool to plan meals and learned that the tool isn’t all that smart.

OpenAI did not respond to an Insider request for comment.

I asked ChatGPT for a pescatarian meal plan

To test the software’s capabilities, I asked ChatGPT to create a seven-day pescatarian meal plan with a daily limit of 1800 calories and 80 grams of protein per day. I wanted to put my body into a calorie deficit to help with weight loss, while keeping protein levels up as this is something I sometimes struggle with because I don’t eat meat.

He only gave me three days worth of meals, such as shrimp, brown rice and carrots, the pescatarian version of the “gym bro” diet lentil soup of chicken and rice, and what looked like a rogue snack suggested by a small apple and precisely 28 grams of pumpkin seeds.

When I asked for more meals, this time ChatGPT provided me with an ocean of seafood to eat salmon, scallops, prawns, tuna steak and canned tuna. While some of the meals looked good, I can come on board with tuna steak and quinoa, the sheer amount of seafood was overwhelming and I feared giving myself mercury poisoning.

I told him to cut the peppers. He gave me the peppers anyway.

I decided to risk the disease and keep the fish, but one thing I would not tolerate is peppers, because they suck. So I asked ChatGPT to rid my plan of peppers. He said, “Sure” and then offered me sliced ​​peppers and hummus as a snack.

I specified further: crop bell peppers, and finally, the devil’s vegetable was gone until I asked what’s in day three’s black bean and corn salad. There in the ingredients list: red bell pepper.

While pepper-gate wasn’t a big deal, the repeated inaccuracy could have been a much bigger problem if my intense dislike for peppers was actually an allergy.

Or if you asked for a health meal plan like TikToker, an inaccuracy could be harder to spot and potentially more dangerous for the user.

That wasn’t the only problem. Although I asked for a plan with 1,800 calories a day, one added up to 2,130 and another to 1,635, or enough calories to feed a 9-year-old.

Whittaker also found that ChatGPT was “hugely flawed” when it came to making a meal plan. He doesn’t ask his users the important questions that a dietitian would know, but your average person might not think about, he said.

“He won’t ask me about my medical background, he won’t talk about micronutrients, he won’t talk about fluids,” she said.

She found the meal plans limited to carbohydrates, proteins, fats, fruits and vegetables, but didn’t mention iron, calcium or vitamin D and whether you should take supplements. People may miss key food groups because the software hasn’t explained what’s in each food, and it’s not clear where the information is being pulled from.

You may also be getting too many nutrients, Whittaker said, for example, too much calcium in the diet can affect your heart, or the wrong amount of vitamin A in pregnant people can affect a baby’s bone development.

And while Whittaker received a disclaimer from ChatGPT to consult a dietician or doctor before trying this meal plan, I haven’t had such luck, which could put someone at risk for nutritional deficiency, she said.

ChatGPT could be a useful way to find new meals to try

It’s not all doom and gloom, though, as both Whittaker and I have seen some benefits to using ChatGPT to plan our meals. Whittaker found it can be used as a guide to a more balanced diet, and found some new lunch options to try.

Whittaker said that with some nutritional knowledge, using ChatGPT could be helpful, but only as a starting point, because one can never be sure the information provided is accurate.

You have to step outside the software and use outside knowledge to formulate something tailored to you, he said.

“I don’t think I’m going to be out of work,” she said.