Privacy policy

Last updated

This policy covers sustainbite.com, run by SustainBite ("we"). It says what we keep about you, why, who helps us run the site, and what you can do about it. Questions: info@sustainbite.com.

What we keep

When you use SustainBite with an account, we keep:

  • Your account: your email address, the name you give, and your password, stored only as a scrambled hash we can't read back. If you sign in with Google, Google tells us your email address and name instead of a password.
  • Your profile: sex, birth date, height, weight, activity level, your goal, and the foods you tell us you don't eat (for example pork, alcohol or eggs), so we can work out your nutrient targets and suggest meals without them. You can also set targets of your own. When you ask for a week made for you, we use these with your favourites, and your country and the month to choose your country's food and what's in season; the week is kept in your browser. If you tell us where you live and the cuisines you cook (Settings → Preferences), we keep them with your account.
  • Where you seem to be: before you choose a country, the site asks our host, Vercel, which country your network address is in, to show you a week of that country's food. Your browser keeps the answer until you close the tab; we don't keep it or your address.
  • What you plan and eat: the foods, meals and recipes on your days, your weekly menus, favourites, notes, water and grocery lists, and the recipes you asked us never to suggest.
  • Your calendar link, if you make one (Settings → Preferences): the meals of the weeks you keep, the times you want them at, your time zone and language. We keep the link only as a scrambled hash; anyone you give the link to, or whose calendar has it, can see those meals, until you stop it or make a new one.
  • Your Fridge & pantry: the food you have at home, mostly what your shopping left over (worked out from usual pack sizes when you press "I've done the shopping") or what you added yourself, with a rough date to use each by and whether you froze it, and the staples you always have. If you're in a family, everyone who plans for it shares one. Food past its date leaves it.
  • Grocery lists you share: when you press Share in your cart, the list is kept at its own link, so whoever you send it to can open it and tick things off. Anyone with the link can see the list; it doesn't show your name.
  • Recipes you write, with their photos. A recipe stays private unless you make it public, and our team checks a public recipe before anyone else sees it.
  • Your family, if you make one: the people you invite by email and who has accepted, and the details you enter for someone without an account, like a child (such as their age, height and weight).
  • Your cooking circle, if you join one: its name and members, the names of the people you bring to the table with the nutrient targets we work out for them (so the dinners suit everyone), whose turn each dinner is, and the dinners planned. The other members see names and portions, not anyone's targets. Nothing is paid through SustainBite: the page shows about what a dinner's food costs, so you can share it between you.
  • Food nearby, if you use it: the food you offer (what it is, the date on its label, how it is kept, when it can be collected, a note and a photo if you add one), where you hand it over, which we show to other people only as a circle of about 300 m around a spot moved a little from it, and exactly to the one person whose request you accept; the requests you make and receive, with the notes in them; and how many offers you have given and collected, shown beside your name. The place you look around from is kept on your browser, not with us. Nothing is paid, and nobody's address is shown on a public map.
  • Home cooks, if you apply as a cook or order from one: a cook's kitchen (its name, story, photo, country, how they handle allergens, who they are registered with as a food business and under what reference, how buyers pay them, where meals are collected), of which other people see everything but the registration reference, the payment details and the exact spot; those two are shown to a buyer only once the cook accepts their order. We keep the dishes posted, the orders (portions, pickup time, your note, the price as it was) and the reviews, which show on the kitchen's page with the reviewer's first name. Admins see applications in full to check the registration. Nothing is paid through SustainBite.
  • Messages, if you write to a neighbour about a request or an order: what you both wrote, kept while the request or order is open and 30 days after it closes, and never longer than 45 days. Only the two of you can read them.
  • Push notifications, if you turn them on: the address and keys your browser gives us for that device, which let only us send to it, your time zone (the Sunday nudge goes at 18:00 where you are) and language. Turning them off, or signing out, removes them.
  • Nutritionists you let in: who may see your food, or see and plan it, until you take that back; the goals they set for you, which you see on My Plan; and private notes they write about your work together, which only they can read.
  • Who saw your data: when someone other than you (your nutritionist, your family's founder or our support team) looks at or changes your data, we note who, what and when. You see the last 90 days of it on the Sharing page.
  • If you're a nutritionist: your practice's name, colour, contact details and logo, which go on the reports you print for clients, and the notes and goals you keep for them.
  • Two-step sign-in, if you turn it on: the key your authenticator app uses, and your recovery codes, kept only as scrambled hashes.
  • Activity you send us: steps and active energy, and from some Android apps the day's total calories burned, if you connect a watch or phone on the Watches page (with the Apple Shortcut on an iPhone, or an app such as HC Webhook on Android).
  • Your public profile, if you turn it on (Settings → Preferences), and always if you are an approved home cook: your first name, photo, since when you joined, a line you write, how often you gave and collected food and cooked for your circle, your kitchen, and the ratings neighbours gave you, with their first names. Anyone with its link can see it; search engines are asked not to list it. It never shows what you eat, your body or your email.
  • Ratings after collected food: once food is collected on Food nearby, the giver and the taker may rate each other (stars and a line), which shows on the other's profile.
  • Your food budget: what each shopping cost, kept when you press "I've done the shopping": each food bought with its price at the cheapest pack Kassalapp found (in Norway), its food group, and what you say you paid; amounts you add yourself; and your budget a month. If you're in a family, everyone who plans for it shares one. Kept 400 days.
  • Your impact page: worked out from the days you saved, your Food nearby, Fridge & pantry, cooking circle and home cook records when you open it; we keep only a running total of the food your shopping used up from home.
  • AI apps you connect, such as Claude (Settings → AI apps): which apps, when you connected them and when each last did something, kept as long as the connection lasts (90 days at most, and until you disconnect it or change your password); the codes they use to sign in, kept only as scrambled hashes; and a week an app made for you, kept 14 days so it can change and save it. Also your choices there: whether people you share with may use AI apps with your data (off unless you turn it on), the most an app may order for you a week, and up to three places it may order meals near, each a name and a location.
  • Messages from us: notifications in the app, and your email address if you sign up for the newsletter (from the form at the bottom of the site; you don't need an account for that).
  • The waiting list, if you join it while SustainBite is full: your email address, the language you used, and when you joined, confirmed your place and were invited. We use it only to email you the link to confirm and, when there's a place, your invitation. An address that isn't confirmed is deleted after 14 days, a confirmed one after a year, and one we invited 30 days after the invitation; it leaves the list as soon as it makes an account. You don't need an account for it.

We don't ask for or keep payment details: SustainBite takes no payments at the moment, and everything is free for everyone until 31 January 2027. Before you can pay for the extras after that, this policy will say what paying keeps.

Why we keep it

  • To run the service you signed up for: your plan, your targets, your lists and your reports.
  • To let the people you choose see your plan: your family, or a nutritionist you've given access.
  • To keep accounts safe: sign-in codes, limits on repeated attempts, and logs that help us find and fix problems.
  • To send you the emails you ask for: sign-in codes, password resets, family invitations, a grocery list you email to yourself, the newsletter if you signed up, and the waiting list's link to confirm and invitation if you joined it.

We don't sell your data, and we don't use what you eat for advertising.

Visitor counts, and no ads

SustainBite shows no ads. On the public pages (the home page, recipes and articles), we count visits from people who aren't signed in with Google Analytics, which uses cookies. Once you're signed in, it doesn't run on any page. You can block or delete these cookies in your browser.

The app itself keeps a few things in your browser's storage, not in cookies: your sign-in, your language, light or dark mode, and your grocery list while you build it.

Who helps us run SustainBite

These services handle data for us, only to provide their part of the service:

  • Vercel serves the website.
  • Render runs our server, in Frankfurt, Germany.
  • MongoDB Atlas holds our database, on Amazon Web Services in Singapore.
  • Google handles "Sign in with Google" (Firebase), and the visitor counts described above. The site also loads a font from Google Fonts.
  • Zoho sends our emails.
  • Sentry receives a report when something on the website or our server breaks, so we can fix it: what went wrong and where in our code, the page's address with anything that could identify you taken out, and your browser and system. Never your name, email, IP address or anything you entered. It keeps them in the EU, in Frankfurt, Germany, and deletes them within 90 days.
  • Wikimedia Commons serves the paintings in our articles, straight to your browser.

When you choose to, your grocery list goes to Instacart (to order the food) or Bring! (to add it to your shopping list app), whose own privacy policies then apply. When you add your calendar link to Google Calendar, Apple's or another calendar, that calendar fetches your meals from it, and its own privacy policy applies to them. On Android, the app you install to send your activity (such as HC Webhook) reads it from Health Connect on your phone and sends it straight to us; its own privacy policy applies to it. Food searches use the USDA's FoodData Central and Open Food Facts; we send them the words you search for, not who you are. When you scan a barcode, the camera's picture stays on your phone: only the barcode's number is sent, to us and from us to Open Food Facts. Norway's numbers come from our own copy of Matvaretabellen: nothing is sent to it. When your grocery list is for Norway, we ask Kassalapp for its foods' prices: we send it the foods' Norwegian names, not who you are.

When you connect an AI app, it does what you ask it on SustainBite, as you, through our connector: it can read and change your profile, the foods you leave out and your settings, make and save weeks for you and the people you plan for, read your reports and grocery lists, keep your Fridge & pantry and food budget, and order home cooks' meals for you within your weekly limit (we mark those orders as made by an AI app, to count them against it). What it reads goes to the company that runs it (Anthropic, for Claude), whose own privacy policy then applies. It can never change your sign-in or delete your account, email anyone but you, or remove anyone. Someone you share with (your nutritionist, or your family's founder) can reach your data through their AI app only if you turn that on in Settings → AI apps; a profile a founder made for someone without an account, like a child, follows the founder.

Some of these companies are in the United States or other countries, so your data may be stored or handled outside your own country.

How long we keep it

As long as you have an account. When you delete your account (Settings → Data & account), we delete your data from our database straight away: your profile, plans, recipes, grocery lists, calendar link, Fridge & pantry and food budget (and your family's, if you founded it), family links, the access you gave and your AI apps' connections. One exception: a public recipe of yours that's part of the site's weekly menus stays, without your name. A grocery list you shared stays at its link for 90 days, then is deleted. The record of who saw your data is kept for 13 months. A nutritionist's notes and goals about a client are deleted when either of them deletes their account. Our server's logs, which can include an email or IP address, are kept for a limited time and then deleted. Newsletter addresses are kept until you unsubscribe. Waiting list addresses are kept for 14 days until confirmed, then a year at most, and 30 days after we invite you.

What you can do

  • See and take away your data: Settings → Data & account → Download your data gives you everything in one file. "Save a copy to Google Drive" puts the same file in your Google Drive instead: Google asks you first to let SustainBite add files to your Drive, which lets it reach only the files it makes, never the rest of your Drive. The file goes from your browser straight to Google; our server never gets that permission, and you can withdraw it in your Google Account (Security → Third-party connections).
  • Correct it: change your profile, targets and preferences in Settings at any time.
  • Delete it: delete your account in Settings → Data & account.
  • Take back access: remove a nutritionist or a family member at any time, and disconnect an AI app in Settings → AI apps.
  • Stop emails: unsubscribe from the newsletter with the link in any newsletter.
  • Ask us: write to info@sustainbite.com about anything here. Depending on where you live, you may also complain to your data protection authority.

Children

Accounts are for people aged 16 and over. A parent or guardian can add a profile for a child to their family: the child gets no account, and the parent decides what's entered. If you think a child under 16 has made an account, write to us and we'll delete it.

Changes

If we change this policy, we'll update it here and change the date at the top. If a change matters for how we use your data, we'll tell you in the app or by email first.