About Forkd
Why I built Forkd
The tracker that counts the calories you can’t see — built by one person who needed it to exist.
Vineet Karhail
Founder
Hi, I’m Vineet. I built Forkd because I spent years thinking I was eating well — until, while I was recovering from a running injury, my doctor recommended some tests. They came back showing I was deficient in iron and vitamin B12. I started digging deeper, and realized I was also eating far less protein than I should have been.
Here’s the thing nobody tells you about tracking your food: the problem was never the counting. It was the guessing. I tried the big tracking apps. I typed in "chicken salad" and picked one of forty database entries, hoping it matched what was actually on my plate. Most people underestimate what they eat by 20 to 50 percent — not because they’re lying to themselves, but because the calories that matter most are the ones you can’t see. The oil the pan was coated in. The dressing tossed through the salad. The butter in the sauce. Around 200 calories a day, every day, invisible.
That’s the gap I wanted to close. Not another calorie counter — there are hundreds. An app that catches what the others miss.
One more thing you should know: I’m not a big company. I’m one person. I had never built an iOS app in my life before this one — I built Forkd with AI coding tools, learning as I went, because I wanted this thing to exist and nobody else was building it the way I thought it should be built. Every feature in the app is something I use myself, every day.
What Makes Forkd Different
Built to catch what the others miss
We count the calories you can’t see
When you snap a photo of your meal, Forkd doesn’t just identify what’s visible. It flags the hidden ingredients — cooking oils, sauces, dressings, glazes — shows you its reasoning for each one, and lets you correct anything it got wrong. Other AI trackers count what the camera sees. Forkd counts what’s actually in your food. That difference is usually a couple hundred calories a day, which is usually the difference between "why isn’t this working" and results.
Forkie is a coach, not a scoreboard
Forkd comes with a hedgehog named Forkie (you can rename him — people do). He’s not decoration. When you log consistently, he thrives — better outfits, better jokes, full health meter. When you disappear for a few days, he gets a bit more direct with you. Not because we want you to feel guilty, but because seven out of ten people quit food tracking within three months, and the ones who stick with it aren’t more disciplined — they just have a reason to come back. Forkie is the reason.
No tricks
Our pricing is on this website, before you download anything. The free tier is genuinely usable, not a locked demo. Cancelling takes the same number of taps as subscribing. This shouldn’t be a differentiator in this category — but if you’ve read the reviews of some of the bigger apps lately, you know that it is.
It goes deeper than calories
Fifteen-plus micronutrients pulled per-ingredient from USDA data, a 0–100 Nutrition Score built on Harvard, WHO, and USDA guidelines, fasting and water tracking, and weekly insights from your actual meals — nudging you gradually toward better habits, never demanding you overhaul your life by Tuesday.
Who Forkd Is For
- People who’ve tracked before, did everything "right," and still couldn’t figure out why the results didn’t follow. (It was probably the hidden calories. It’s almost always the hidden calories.)
- People who want to eat better but found traditional tracking so tedious they quit by week 3.
- People who want to understand their food — not just a number, but why a meal scores the way it does.
- People who do better with a bit of warmth and play than with a spreadsheet. If a small hedgehog celebrating your lunch sounds stupid to you, fair. If it sounds like exactly the kind of stupid that would actually keep you going — that’s who I built this for.
Who Forkd Is Not For
I’d rather tell you now than have you find out after downloading.
- If you need lab-grade precision — you’re prepping for a bodybuilding show, or managing a medical condition that requires exact numbers — a food scale and a clinical-grade tracker will serve you better. AI photo analysis is dramatically more accurate than eyeballing, but it’s an estimate, and I won’t pretend otherwise.
- If you want a massive manual database to search through — that’s genuinely what the big legacy apps are best at. Forkd is built around the camera, not the search bar.
- If tracking food tends to take you somewhere unhealthy — if counting has ever fed obsession rather than awareness, please talk to a professional you trust before using any tracking app, including this one. No app is worth your peace with food.
- If you want an app you never open. Forkd works because you show up. Five seconds a meal — but you do have to show up.
Try Forkd
Catch the calories you can’t see
Snap a photo and Forkd flags the hidden oils, sauces, and dressings — plus 15+ micronutrients, a 0–100 Nutrition Score, and Forkie to keep you coming back.
Scan to download Forkd on the App Store