VALE · PRIVACY
Privacy policy
Your meals belong to you. Here is what Vale processes, what stays on your iPhone and what happens when you connect Apple Health.
Last updated: App versions 0.4 / 1.0 · iOS
Photo analysis and nutrient calculations run locally on your iPhone.
No Vale account, advertising trackers or meal uploads to an AI service.
Apple Health is optional. You control read and write permissions.
Product barcodes are sent to Open Food Facts only when you choose to search. Label photos stay on device.
Controller & contact
The controller for Vale: Nutrition Tracker and the content of this privacy policy is Frederic Ohnemüller, Schönhauser Allee 115, 10439 Berlin, Germany.
For privacy questions or to exercise your rights, contact fohnemueller@gmail.com. Please do not send unsolicited meal photos or health information by email.
Scope of this policy
This policy applies to the iOS app Vale: Nutrition Tracker and this privacy website.
Vale provides a nutrition journal, on-device photo analysis and nutrient estimates, and can exchange permitted data with Apple Health. The current app has no developer-operated server, registration or app-operated cloud synchronisation.
Information in the app
Vale processes meal photos you take or select, meal titles, dates and times, meal categories, matched foods, quantities and calculated calories, macronutrients and available micronutrients. It also processes settings such as a manual calorie goal, technical entry identifiers and the status of Health exports.
Confirmed journal entries and their photos are stored in the app's protected storage on your iPhone. Settings are saved locally. Using these features does not send these contents to the developer.
Vale does not require your contacts, location or advertising identifier. The current app contains no embedded advertising, analytics or third-party crash-reporting SDKs.
Camera, photos & on-device AI
The camera is used only after you grant the iOS permission. The system photo picker provides the particular image you select; this does not require general access to your entire photo library. You can also enter meals manually.
The bundled SmolVLM-256M-Instruct image model runs locally. Photos are not sent to the developer, OpenAI, Hugging Face or another AI provider for recognition. The app does not download model weights during analysis and does not use your photos to train a model.
Nutrient calculations use a bundled offline food catalogue based on USDA FoodData Central. No personal query is sent to USDA. Suggestions and reference portions are estimates you can review and correct before saving. There is no solely automated decision with legal or similarly significant effects within the meaning of Article 22 GDPR. Optional branded-product data and manually checked label values supplement this offline catalogue as described next.
Products, barcodes & labels
Apple Vision reads text and barcodes in selected product or label photos locally on your iPhone. Photos are not uploaded for this. Recognized values are shown as a draft for you to review and confirm. Manual entry and the bundled USDA catalogue work without an online product lookup.
Only choosing “Search Open Food Facts” sends the entered or recognized product barcode (EAN/GTIN) to Open Food Facts at world.openfoodfacts.org. The service also receives necessary connection data, including your IP address, request time and a general Vale app/version identifier. No photos, meal titles, personal journal entries or Health data are sent. Vale sends no advertising or device identifier and uses no cookies for this request.
The optional lookup takes place only after the in-app notice and your search action, based on Article 6(1)(a) GDPR. You can avoid it by entering label values locally. Open Food Facts processes the request under its own privacy information, including contact details, retention and your rights. Vale operates no intermediary server for this.
Retrieved public product values, barcode, language, source identifier and retrieval time are cached separately from USDA data in protected app storage (up to 100 entries, reused for up to 30 days). Older entries are refreshed on a new lookup or replaced when space is needed. Confirmed product and label values remain part of your meal until you delete it. Deleting the app removes the local product cache; offloading does not. Missing nutrients remain unknown.
Apple Health / HealthKit
Connecting Apple Health is optional. Vale requests permissions through Apple's system dialog. You may allow or deny individual data types and later change access in Apple Health or iOS settings.
Reading: With permission, Vale reads only resting energy and active energy for the last seven completed calendar days. Days with available values for both energy types are used to calculate an estimated daily energy need. The current day is excluded. These values are processed locally and are not sent to the developer. An explicitly labelled manual goal remains available when suitable data is missing.
Writing: For confirmed meals and with permission, Vale can write known nutrition values to Apple Health: energy, protein, carbohydrates, fat, fibre, sugar, saturated fat, cholesterol and supported vitamins and minerals. Meal time, meal title and technical identifiers for updating or deleting the app's own records are included. Photos and ingredient lists are not written to HealthKit.
HealthKit data is not used for advertising, marketing, data brokerage or model training and is not sent to an external analytics service. Apple manages storage and any Apple Health synchronisation you enable according to your settings and Apple's privacy information.
Purposes & legal bases
Local processing serves only the features you request: recording meals, suggesting foods, calculating nutrients, managing entries and optionally connecting Apple Health. Where personal data is processed to provide the requested app features, the legal basis is Article 6(1)(b) GDPR.
Optional access and transfers rely on your consent under Article 6(1)(a) GDPR and, where special categories of personal data such as health data are involved, your explicit consent under Article 9(2)(a) GDPR. You can disable optional features and withdraw system permissions. Withdrawal does not affect the lawfulness of earlier processing.
Contact requests are handled under Article 6(1)(b) or (f) GDPR depending on their purpose. Secure delivery of this website relies on the legitimate interest in providing accessible and protected privacy information under Article 6(1)(f) GDPR. Applicable statutory retention obligations rely on Article 6(1)(c) GDPR.
Storage & backups
Your journal stays in local app storage until you delete entries or the app. Vale uses iOS file protection for journal files and saved photos. Health energy values read by Vale and the resulting energy-need estimate are currently held in memory for local calculation and display.
Depending on your device and iCloud settings, app data may be included in device backups managed by Apple or by you. Vale does not provide its own backup or cloud synchronisation service. Apple Health data may also be backed up or synchronised separately according to your Apple settings. Such backups are governed by Apple's terms and your chosen settings.
Contact correspondence is retained only as long as necessary to address your request, preserve legitimate legal claims or meet statutory obligations. This website has no visitor database of its own; technical hosting data is subject to the infrastructure providers' processing and retention rules described below.
Deletion & withdrawing access
You can delete saved meals in Vale. For previously exported meals, Vale also attempts to remove the corresponding Health records created by Vale. If permissions are missing or the operation fails, the app reports an error; check the deletion status directly in Apple Health as well.
Deleting the app through iOS removes its local app storage. Offloading the app is not data deletion. Previously exported Apple Health records and existing device backups may remain after the app is deleted and must be managed separately.
Withdrawing a camera or Health permission stops future access of that kind but does not automatically delete information already stored. Because the developer receives no copy of your local journal, they cannot retrieve it from a server or delete it remotely.
Recipients & sharing
Vale does not send meal photos, journal entries or Health energy data to the developer or an AI service. Optional HealthKit exports pass permitted values to the Health database on your device.
Apple independently processes information in connection with app distribution, TestFlight, iOS backups and Apple Health services. If you send a privacy or support email, the relevant email providers process the sender address and message contents. The contact address listed here uses Google/Gmail; see Google's privacy policy.
Your personal data is not sold. Legally required disclosures remain possible. The following hosting information also applies when you visit this website.
This website & Cloudflare
This static privacy and support website is delivered through Cloudflare Pages. To serve pages, handle errors and prevent abuse, the hosting provider processes information including your IP address, requested URL, request time, browser/device information and technical connection data. No meal or Health data from the app is transmitted to this website.
The page source supplied by us contains no analytics or advertising scripts, contact forms, embedded social media, externally loaded fonts, or cookies or local-storage features of its own. Technically necessary processing by the hosting infrastructure is separate from this.
Further information: Cloudflare's privacy policy. Cloudflare hosts the website; it does not analyse meal photos for Vale.
International processing
On-device photo analysis and journal storage do not require sending your information to a server outside your device. Visiting this website, contacting us by email or using Apple services may involve processing by international providers, including in the United States.
Applicable transfer mechanisms and safeguards depend on the service and its privacy information linked above, such as an applicable adequacy decision or appropriate safeguards under Article 46 GDPR. The app itself does not transmit personal contents to these providers for photo analysis.
App Store, TestFlight & diagnostics
Apple processes technical and account-related information when you use the App Store and TestFlight under its own terms. Depending on your Apple sharing choices and the testing process, the developer may receive crash reports, diagnostic information or TestFlight feedback you explicitly submit, including attachments.
This is separate from data collection by Vale itself. The current app has no app-operated telemetry or external crash-reporting service. Include only information you intend to share when submitting feedback.
Your privacy rights
Where statutory requirements are met, you have rights of access (Article 15 GDPR), rectification (Article 16), erasure (Article 17), restriction (Article 18) and data portability (Article 20). You can withdraw consent at any time for future processing.
For processing based on Article 6(1)(f) GDPR, you may object under Article 21 on grounds relating to your particular situation. Contact fohnemueller@gmail.com. For information stored only on your device, use the local editing and deletion functions first; the developer has no remote access to it.
You may also lodge a complaint with a data protection authority, particularly in your place of residence, work or the alleged infringement. In Berlin, this is the Berlin Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information.
Changes to this policy
This policy describes the current features. If features such as accounts, synchronisation, subscriptions, additional data sources or new analysis services are introduced later, this policy will be updated before the relevant processing begins. Separate consent will be requested where required. The date above identifies the current version.