- I asked ChatGPT to create a meal plan after I saw a TikToker do it in a viral video.
- A dietitian, Hannah Whittaker, found the AI tool was beneficial for thinking of new meal ideas.
"So I go on ChatGPT and I ask it to make a meal plan that is endometriosis-friendly and good for hormone imbalances," a TikToker said in a video with 3.4 million views.
ChatGPT — an AI tool that has created a huge buzz in recent months for its human-like ability to answer questions and complete tasks — provided @mellyssalise with the goods. She tweaked the meal plan by asking ChatGPT to change the calorie count and take out ingredients that 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," she said.
But despite being trained with huge swathes of information from books to scientific journals and news articles, ChatGPT cannot be trusted to provide meal plans that are safe to follow, dietitian Hannah Whittaker told Insider.
"As a dietitian, we're the only ones that are evidence-based and bound by law to give you advice," she said.
Both Whittaker and I asked the tool to make meal plans and we learned that the tool is not so smart after all.
OpenAI didn't respond to a request for comment from Insider.
I asked ChatGPT for a pescatarian meal plan
To test the abilities of the software, I asked ChatGPT to make a seven-day pescatarian meal plan with an 1800 daily calorie limit and 80 grams of protein daily. I wanted to put my body in a calorie deficit to aid weight loss, while keeping protein levels high as this is something I sometimes struggle with because I don't eat meat.
It gave me only three days' worth of meals, such as shrimp, brown rice, and carrots — the pescatarian version of the chicken and rice "gym bro" diet — lentil soup, and what felt like a rogue snack suggestion of a small apple and precisely 28 grams of pumpkin seeds.
When I asked for more meals, this time ChatGPT provided me with an ocean's worth of fish to get through — salmon, scallops, shrimp, tuna steak, and canned tuna. While some of the meals sounded nice — I can get on board with tuna steak and quinoa — the sheer amount of fish was overwhelming and I worried I'd give myself mercury poisoning.
I told it to cut out peppers. It gave me peppers anyway.
I decided to risk illness and keep the fish, but one thing I would not tolerate is peppers, because they are disgusting. So I asked ChatGPT to rid my plan of peppers. It replied: "Sure" — and then offered me sliced bell peppers and hummus as a snack.
I specified further: cut out bell peppers, and finally, the devil's vegetable was gone — until I asked what goes into the day three black bean and corn salad. There in the ingredients list: red bell pepper.
While pepper-gate wasn't a huge deal, the repeated inaccuracy could have been a much bigger problem had my intense dislike for peppers actually been an allergy.
Or if I'd asked for a meal plan for health reasons like the TikToker, an inaccuracy could be harder to spot and potentially more dangerous for the user.
This 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 "massively flawed" when it came to making a meal plan. It doesn't ask its users the important questions that a dietitian would know to but your average person might not think of, she said.
"It's not gonna ask about my medical background, it didn't talk about micronutrients, it doesn't talk about fluid," she said.
She found the meal plans stuck to carbs, protein, fat, fruit, and vegetables, but didn't talk about iron, calcium, or vitamin D and if you need to take supplements. People could miss out on key food groups because the software didn't explain what is in each food, and it isn't clear where the information is being pulled from.
You could also have too much of a nutrient, Whittaker said, for example excess calcium in the diet can affect your bones and lead to problems with your heart, or high levels of vitamin A during pregnancy can affect a baby's cardiac and nervous system.
And while Whittaker was given a disclaimer by ChatGPT to consult a dietitian or physician before trying this meal plan, I had no such luck, which could put someone at risk of nutritional deficiency, she said.
ChatGPT could be a helpful way to find new meals to try
It's not all doom and gloom though, as both Whittaker and I saw some benefits to using ChatGPT to make our meal plans. Whittaker found it can be used as a guide for a more balanced diet, and I found a few new lunch options to try out.
Whittaker said that with some nutritional knowledge, using ChatGPT could be helpful, but just as a starting point, because you can never be sure if the information provided is accurate.
You need to come away from the software and use outside knowledge to formulate something tailored to you, she said.
"I don't think I'll be out of a job," she said.