Choose your partMethodology · Version 2.0
Plantee Meal Verification StandardHow every meal is checked and counted.
Anyone can be part of Plantee: eat plant-based and earn a reward, add to the pool that pays those rewards, or invite a friend. This page explains how we check each meal before it is rewarded, and how we count what it adds up to.
Version 2.0, in effect from . For the short story, see How it works.
1. Summary
- A meal counts only after it passes three checks: the photo, the plate and the payout.
- Each verified meal is counted once, and the same plate is never paid twice.
- Impact starts from peer-reviewed food data (Poore & Nemecek, 2018), and we count only two thirds of it.
- One verified meal counts up to 1.4 kg of CO₂ avoided, about 1.3 kg on average.
2. Scope
This standard covers every meal posted in the Plantee app, and every figure Plantee shows for verified meals: the rewards members earn, the live counter on plantee.co and the totals in the app. A meal is verified when it passes all three checks in sections 3 to 5.
3. Check one: the photo
The app makes sure the meal is real before anything else happens.
- The photo is taken inside the Plantee app, with the camera. Photos from the gallery are not accepted.
- It is taken on a genuine phone.
- Meals are at least 3 hours apart, and a member can post no more than 3 meals in any 16 hours.
- A photo rejected because of a camera fault does not count towards that limit.
More in Post limits per day.
4. Check two: the plate
Our meal checker, IRIS, looks at every photo and asks three questions:
- Is it a real meal? Not a screen, not a snack.
- Is the protein clearly plant-based?
- Is it a whole serving, before it was eaten?
IRIS decides from what the photo shows, not from ingredients it cannot see. So a meal that really was plant-based can still be rejected when the photo does not make that clear. Anything unclear goes to a person.
More in What makes a meal Plantee? and Why was my meal rejected?
5. Check three: the payout
Before rewards are paid out, we look again.
- Every rewarded meal is compared with similar meals, so the same plate cannot be paid twice.
- When a member withdraws, a safety clearance of up to 14 days checks the account, its activity, and the meals and referrals behind the rewards.
- Anything unusual goes to a person, who checks the actual plates.
When a meal fails a check
- We take back only the meals that fail, never the whole account for one bad photo.
- A whole account is closed only when the intent is clear, such as a ring of accounts working together.
- Every rejection or reversal comes with a reason.
6. Counting impact
Each verified meal stands for one plant-based meal eaten in place of a typical one. We start from peer-reviewed food data, Poore & Nemecek (2018), and count only two thirds of the difference, so the totals stay conservative.
CO₂ per verified meal = 1.388 kg × the share of a full mealA meal of 500 calories or more counts in full, about 1.4 kg. A smaller meal counts in proportion to its estimated calories. On average a verified meal counts about 1.3 kg.
| Impact | Per verified meal | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| CO₂ avoided | About 1.3 kg on average, up to 1.4 kg | Poore & Nemecek (2018), reduced by a third |
| Water saved | About 300 litres | Poore & Nemecek (2018), reduced by a third |
| Land spared | About 3.5 m² | Poore & Nemecek (2018), reduced by a third |
| Animals spared | About 23 for every 100 meals | Plantee estimate, explained below |
How we estimate animals spared
An average meat eater accounts for about 25 farmed land animals and about 170 farmed fish and shellfish a year, over about 1,095 meals. Each meal that moves to plants spares a share of those: about 2.5 land animals and 15.5 fish and shellfish for every 100 meals.
Most forest cleared for farming makes room for animal feed and grazing, and the wild animals living there are lost with it. We count a deliberately low share of that: about 5 wild animals for every 100 meals. These are rates across many meals, not a count for any one meal.
7. Records and use of the figures
- Every rewarded meal is logged once, with its photo and the time it was taken.
- The live counter and the totals in the app add up the figures in section 6 for every verified meal, made the same way for each one.
- Plantee does not sell these figures as carbon credits.
8. Sources
- Poore, J. and Nemecek, T. (2018). Reducing food's environmental impacts through producers and consumers. Science 360 (6392), 987–992. doi.org/10.1126/science.aaq0216
- Plantee Help Center: What makes a meal Plantee?, Post limits per day, Why was my meal rejected? and Why is my withdrawal taking so long?
Questions about this standard? Email support@plantee.co.