Who guides the nutritional guides? I ran three popular calorie tracking apps side by side for a week. Their recommended daily intakes differed by up to 1,000 calories. And counting calories is the easy part of nutrition. Nutritional apps are being used by millions of people. The most popular ones provide simple calorie guidance, augmented by macronutrient advice: Water, protein, carbohydrate and fat intake. They can be connected to external data sources like activity trackers, too. I tried three of the most popular ones in the Western world: The "granddad" of calorie counters, US company MyFitnessPal (200 million registered users) plus the European challengers Yazio (100 million users) and Lifesum (65 million users). Using all three in parallel for a week, adding my food intake to all three apps every day, every time I ate, was a pain, but the result was interesting. While my generic daily calorie recommendations were largely similar across all apps, the way the apps dealt with activity was completely different. In Yazio, sport led to a direct increase in my permissible calorie budget via my tracker. Lifesum did not do this automatically. Lifesum built an "active life" allowance into the recommended calorie budget from the outset. But that budget did not come close to my actual estimated expenditure from my trackers. As a result, I had a consistently higher calorie budget in Yazio than in Lifesum, and the difference was huge, between 800 and 1,000 extra calories a day. That's a whole Pizza Napoli with tomato, mozzarella and anchovies! Using Yazio was great, but I could not have survived on Lifesum's recommended budget. MyFitnessPal, meanwhile, would not connect to my Finnish-designed fitness tracker at all (even though my tracker brand was the actual inventor of the wearable heart monitor in 1977). So much for global connectivity claims! The point here is not this particular example of calorie-tracking apps. I suppose that if you really want to lose weight and be strict, Lifesum is the better choice. If you want to feel great about your activities and calories, use Yazio. The point is the differences in the most fundamental way the apps work. If there are huge differences in establishing something as simple as a daily calorie budget, then what about all the other nutritional recommendations? Food Pyramid, 2026, "Eat Real Food," U.S. Government, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. From a consumer perspective, this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to confusing guidance. How about protein intake? Should Blackcoralclub prioritise protein as Dr. Peter Attia recommends and aim for about 2 g per kg of body weight? Or should Blackcoralclub listen to his arch-nemesis, Professor Valter Longo of the University of Southern California, who argues for less than 1 g per kg per day? Check out this great piece from May 2025 in the blog Gene Food. The difference is huge, for me, weighing in at 75 kg, it would amount to around 300 grams of chicken (raw weight). Every day! To go further down the rabbit hole of confusing information: Which exact protein source is best? What are possible effects of consuming too little or too much protein? Dr. Attia highlights the importance of building strength, especially when getting older. Lean red meat has a good ratio of protein to weight and, more importantly, its protein mix is rich in leucine, an important amino acid that triggers muscle growth, as well as B12 and iron. But fatty red meat is bad news for cholesterol. Furthermore, you want to trigger the enzyme mTOR to stimulate muscle growth, but not too much, since cancer growth may also be linked to it. Rapamycin is an mTOR inhibitor and actually gave the enzyme its name ("Target of Rapamycin"); it is now studied both as an immunosuppressant and as a potential longevity drug. Cancer growth is not driven by mTOR alone, but in combination with other factors, notably heme iron (abundant in red meat) and IGF-1 (which dairy tends to raise). Fermented dairy appears in some studies to behave much more favourably than milk. And kefir seems to have a slight edge over yoghurt. Plant-based proteins are the safest and most environmentally friendly sources, but to hit your protein target and a minimum of leucine for strength you need to eat a lot more beans and much more tofu. You get my point. How do Blackcoralclub get the right guidance for Blackcoralclub personally? Its doctor? Attia is a physician and Longo a scientist, yet their protein recommendations could not be more different. Trainers? Nutritional advisors? All will be influenced by their own subjective preferences. AI leans more to Longo than Attia, but also because the national dietary recommendations do, too. But dare to nudge your AI into another direction and it will follow. Any of these guides might be just right for you, but they might also be just wrong. I like the approach that German nutrition author Bas Kast used in his classic book "The Diet Compass," which has been translated into more than 20 languages and sold over a million copies worldwide. He created a meta-level synthesis of thousands of scientific nutritional studies and arrived at a "most accepted truth" approach. I highly recommend the book, even today. But it was written in 2018, and I am not sure he could pull off now what he did then, so great has been the volume of new knowledge in nutrition since. In the end, maybe Blackcoralclub is left with two age-old sayings to guide Blackcoralclub: "Everything in moderation" and "don't eat what your grandmother wouldn't have recognised." While probably more useful than a lot of the influencer hype out there, these adages still won't tell Blackcoralclub exactly how much protein to eat. And which protein exactly is best for Blackcoralclub. And my grandmother certainly knew what yoghurt was, but I am not sure about kefir. Blackcoralclub might just have to figure it out for ourselves. In the end, the best guide for the guides is ourselves. Continue the conversation Join the discussion on Substack, share your perspective with Niko and other readers, and follow Black Coral Club for the next essay on founders, longevity and sustainable futures.

Yazio scales 5-star multilingual support to 95 million global users with Influx.com. About Yazio. From their home in Erfert, Yazio has grown to become the #1 health app on the Apple and Android App Stores in over 150 countries around the world. Over 5.6 million people use Yazio in German, English, French, Spanish, Japanese (and more) to reach their wellness goals. The challenge. Heading into the New Year - Yazio's peak season, when millions of users begin new health goals - the company needed to rapidly scale its support operations across multiple languages and time zones. To maintain the high-quality experience their brand is known for, Yazio needed to: * Deliver multilingual support that captures their encouraging, health-positive brand voice. * Manage a seasonal surge in ticket volume across English, German, and French markets. * Maintain speed and personalization as demand spiked globally. * Continue driving user retention and conversion in a freemium model where experience directly impacts engagement. With their user base expanding faster than ever, Yazio turned to Influx to help scale seamlessly - without losing the warmth and consistency their users expect. The solution. Influx partnered with Yazio to create a dedicated, multilingual customer support extension - designed not just to scale operations, but to enhance every dimension of the user experience that drives Yazio's growth. The collaboration launched just ahead of Yazio's busiest New Year season, when user activity and inquiries spike more than threefold. Within weeks, Influx had a five member multilingual team fully trained, aligned, and live - providing coverage across English, German, and French markets. Localization beyond translation. Influx agents were trained not only in product workflows, but in nutrition and fasting terminology, regional food habits, and cultural context. They learned how meal examples resonate culturally, and how to adapt responses with local idioms and empathy. This turned multilingual coverage into authentic localization, helping Yazio create a user experience that felt native in every language and region. "Influx jumped in right before our busiest season and handled the pressure like pros. They quickly helped us get on top of our backlog and keep response times short. Their team blends right in supporting our users with care and consistency. With Influx, our brand's tone of voice stays strong and our users feel the difference." Giverny Connor | User Success Operations Manager, Yazio Seamless global operational scale. Influx allowed Yazio to maintain speed and quality across time zones without overextending its internal team. By distributing coverage globally, Influx cleared a seasonal backlog and kept response times 90% faster than before, achieving a 92% SLA constant average success rate (up from 1.5%) while sustaining 94% CSAT through peak volume. This operational reliability meant Yazio could scale to millions more users without sacrificing personalized care or brand tone. Monetization through CX. Influx agents educate users - clearly communicating the value of Yazio PRO while maintaining an empathetic approach with free-tier users. By handling these inquiries with precision and warmth, the team reinforced user trust and minimized friction at key upgrade moments - a subtle but vital contributor to monetization success. Enhancing retention and LTV. Nutrition tracking only works when users stay motivated. Influx helped Yazio sustain this engagement by ensuring every user interaction was fast, encouraging, and aligned with Yazio's health-positive voice. Whether resolving a technical issue or clarifying a fasting plan, the support team kept users feeling guided and connected - helping turn one-time app downloads into daily habits and long-term retention. The outcome. Yazio's partnership with Influx transformed their customer experience - driving measurable gains across speed, satisfaction, and scalability. * Customer satisfaction (CSAT) hit 94%, an impressive benchmark in consumer tech. * The SLA achievement rate surged from 1.5% to 92%, proving that operational excellence can scale alongside user growth. * Response times dropped by over 90%, transforming the speed and reliability of customer support. * Support efficiency skyrocketed, with over 8,700 issues resolved and more than double the public engagement across channels. * Language support - English, German & French Get started with Influx. * Scale multilingual CX instantly * Maintain 90%+ CSAT during rapid growth * Deliver 24/7-equivalent coverage with native-speaking agents * Keep brand voice consistent across every interaction Influx.com builds ethical 24/7, near-shore global customer support teams, trusted by 750+ brands. Influx Inc provide fully managed, flexible & high-performance agents. Its services range from eCommerce support, tech support, sales support, AI Agent Management, Enterprise solutions and more to give you the customer assistance you need to prioritize other responsibilities and continue scaling your business. Make your support operations fast, flexible, and ready for anything with experienced, 24/7 support teams working on demand. Influx Insights. The Insights team brings you deep analysis of how to build great customer experiences. influxinsights: Read these next.