Foodzone fills in every target for you, and none of those numbers are invented here. Each one is arithmetic against a published reference — the Australian and New Zealand Nutrient Reference Values (NRVs) and the NHMRC Australian Dietary Guidelines — worked out for the profile's age, sex, life stage, body size and activity level. The rules genuinely differ by age, because the guidelines themselves do.
To see or change any of it, open Profile from the diary, then select Edit next to Targets.
Energy comes first
Energy is the first row of the Macros panel: the daily energy requirement in kilojoules. Leave its Custom switch off and the figure is worked out from age, sex, height, weight and activity level; switch it on and type your own.
Everything else is measured against it, so changing energy moves the macro grams and the food group serves with it.
Macronutrients
The rest of the Macros panel sets protein, carbohydrate and fat. The order the defaults are worked out in is protein first, fat next, carbohydrate as the balance — the order a dietitian writes a prescription in.
| Age | Protein | Fat | Carbohydrate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Adults 19 and over, plus pregnancy and breastfeeding at any age | 25% of the energy requirement | 30% | the balance — 45% |
| Children 1–18 | per kilogram of body weight (RDI, 0.77–1.08 g/kg by age and sex) | 30% | the balance, kept inside 45–65% |
| Infants under 1 | adequate intake, per kilogram of body weight | no reference — left blank | adequate intake |
Why a child's protein is set per kilogram
The NRVs give carbohydrate and fat the same recommended share of energy at every age from one year up — carbohydrate 45–65%, fat 20–35%. But they set a share of energy for protein only for adults. For children they set protein per kilogram of body weight instead, because growth scales with body size rather than with how much a child eats. Foodzone mirrors that rather than inventing a percentage for children.
Why carbohydrate is the balance
Making carbohydrate the remainder means the three macro targets always account for the whole energy requirement, at every age. For an adult it changes nothing: 100% − 25% protein − 30% fat is exactly the 45% carbohydrate the split already specified. For a child, whose protein is pinned in grams, a fixed 45% would leave part of the requirement unaccounted for — which is not what a plan looks like. The balanced carbohydrate target is held inside its published 45–65% range, so a default always sits within the guideline even in the edge cases.
Infants get no macro targets at all: there is no recommended energy share for any macronutrient under one year, so protein and carbohydrate fall through to their adequate intakes and fat, which has no infant reference of any kind, is left blank.
Grams or percentages
A Grams / % of energy switch at the top of the panel sets which unit the rows are in. Either one sets a macro, and whichever you use is the one the row keeps. Set 25% with the switch on % of energy and 25% is what is stored: the grams are derived from it there and then, and derived again every time the energy requirement moves — a new weight, a different activity level, a custom figure typed in. Set grams and the grams are what is stored; the percentage shown beside them is the arithmetic run the other way, against the current requirement.
Percentages run above 0 and up to 100, to one decimal place, and they do not have to total 100%. A split that leaves part of the day unclaimed saves like any other — the panel notes it under the bar as 75% of energy targeted — doesn't total 100% rather than refusing the save. The side of the switch you used last is remembered, so both editors open the way you left them, and a row's max flips unit with its target.
Food group serves
The Food groups panel sets daily serves for the seven top-level groups from the Australian Dietary Guidelines. Defaults are built in three steps:
- The base pattern for the profile's age, sex and life stage — vegetables and legumes, fruit, grains and cereals, meat and alternatives, milk, yoghurt and cheese, and unsaturated spreads and oils. The oils allowance is part of the base pattern, not an extra.
- Additional serves. The base pattern is written for a reference person. Where the profile needs more energy — taller, more active — the extra serves are spread across the five scaled groups (vegetables and legumes, fruit, grains and cereals, meat and alternatives, milk, yoghurt and cheese) in the pattern's own proportions. The oils allowance is not scaled, and there is no "additional serves" row to manage: the defaults arrive already topped up.
- Extras, which gets a max and no target. It is whatever is left of the additional-serve allowance once the goal groups have taken their share, so it tightens as the rest of the pattern grows.
Under the list, one sentence keeps score: These serves ≈ 10,300 kJ · 97% of your energy needs. It counts the goal serves only — the Extras ceiling is a limit, not part of the plan, so it never adds to that total.
Targets stop at the top level. Sub-groups like starchy vegetables or lean meat explain a tally rather than set one, so they carry no targets of their own.
These defaults are requirements, not diet plans. No weight goal is asked for anywhere in this panel: energy deficits and surpluses belong to a plan, written by whoever is doing the planning.
The panel is absent for profiles on a food database that does not include food group data; not every database does. Any serve targets you saved are kept, so switching back to a database that has them restores the panel with your numbers.
Everything else
Every other nutrient takes the first of these that exists for the profile:
- A health guideline, where one applies — alcohol's 14 g a day, from the Australian guideline of no more than 10 standard drinks a week.
- The macro target above, for protein, carbohydrate and fat.
- The RDI — the recommended dietary intake.
- The AI — the adequate intake, where no RDI has been set.
- The SDT — the suggested dietary target. In practice this never happens: every nutrient with an SDT also has an RDI or an AI.
- The UL — the upper limit, for the few codes with nothing else.
The macro rule sits above the RDI on purpose. An adult's protein RDI is a floor — 0.84 g per kilogram for a man 19–30 — not a figure to aim at, so a macro target that showed it would be showing the wrong kind of number. See Nutrient reference values explained for what each of those references means.
Custom on, custom off
Every target row carries a Custom switch. Off means Foodzone keeps the row on the recommended values for the profile, and the number moves when the profile does. On means the numbers are yours. Switching Custom off restores the default, so it is also the reset for a single row.
Reset to defaults at the foot of each panel resets that panel's rows. Your energy requirement is the first row of the Macros panel — switch its Custom off to go back to the calculated figure.