OpenAI linked ChatGPT to Instacart on Dec. 8, 2025. Now a recipe request can end in a delivered cart1.
DoorDash followed ten days later with its own grocery app inside the chat2. A nutrition study published this year found a harder problem. AI meal plans built for teenagers missed their calorie target by almost 700 calories, close to a full meal14.
The board scores seven AI tools that help you cook. It ranks each one on taste, planning, grocery checkout, price and kitchen control.
This month's strip, Meal Prep, is about a robot that loves repeating one recipe. It waits at the end of this piece.
Five Jobs a Cooking Tool Can Do
A cooking tool can do five different jobs, and most pick two or three. Taste asks whether a recipe actually works, with real ingredients in real amounts. Plan asks how well a tool builds a week around one person's diet. Cart asks whether a found recipe turns into a bought cart on its own.
Price asks what the free tier skips. Kitchen asks whether the plan reaches your oven or your fridge too34.
SideChef shows why Kitchen matters on its own. Its app can run a recipe step by step on a paired oven. It works with Bosch, GE and LG ovens through Home Connect3.
That control reaches past the plan, into the appliance itself. The board ranks SideChef third, one place under Samsung Food.
The Cooking Board
Rank is the editorial composite, weighted toward Cart and Kitchen, the two jobs that moved most this year.
| # | Product | Price a month | What puts it here |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | ChatGPT | $0 to $20 | Checkout runs through Instacart's 1,800-plus stores and DoorDash's grocery app, both launched in December 202512. |
| 2 | Samsung Food | $0 to $6.99 | Food+ reads a fridge photo with Vision AI and plans around what it finds, a 2026 review reports45. |
| 3 | SideChef | $0 to $4.99 | RecipeGen AI turns one photo into a recipe, and CookAssist runs it on a paired LG, GE or Bosch oven3. |
| 4 | Gemini | $0 to $19.99 | The Keep extension turns a found recipe straight into a shopping list, Google's own extensions page says6. |
| 5 | PlateJoy | $8.25 to $12.99 | Healthline Media's paid planner builds a week around one person's diet, and every tier costs money89. |
| 6 | Mealime | $0 to $5.99 | A free planner for quick dinners, with Pro adding macros and meal swaps for $5.99 a month7. |
| 7 | Claude | $0 to $20 | Writes a recipe or a week's plan in chat, missing a grocery list or appliance link so far. |
Two more sit below the ranking. Paprika organizes and scales recipes you already have, each one written by a person1011. Yummly shut down in December 2024, after Whirlpool, which bought it in May 2017, laid off its team that April1213.
PlateJoy's $12.99 plan costs more than double Samsung Food+, Mealime or SideChef's premium tier
Monthly price of each app's paid tier, checked Oct. 24, 2026
Each bar is one app's monthly premium price in dollars; the taller the bar, the more it costs.
Sources: Apple App Store [3]; Tool Directory [4]; MealFan [7]; Garage Gym Reviews [8]. Chart by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this chart
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| SideChef | $4.99 |
| Mealime | $5.99 |
| Samsung Food+ | $6.99 |
| PlateJoy | $12.99 |
Who Wins What
Cart belongs to ChatGPT. OpenAI's Instacart app reaches more than 1,800 retailers. Instacart's CTO called it a seamless way to turn a conversation into a delivered order1. DoorDash's own grocery app does the same job through a second set of stores2.
Kitchen belongs to SideChef and Samsung Food. SideChef's RecipeGen AI photographs a dish and writes the recipe back, then can run a supported oven by itself3. Samsung Food+ reads a fridge photo and plans a week around what it finds there4.
Plan belongs to PlateJoy. Healthline Media runs it as a paid planner built around one person's diet. The standard plan costs $12.99 a month89. Mealime takes the budget seat, free for core planning and $5.99 a month for Pro's macros and swaps7.
AI diet plans for teens put 34% of calories in carbs, under the 47.5% dietitians recommend
Average share of daily calories from carbs, five AI tools' teen meal plans against the National Academies' range
Each bar is an average share of daily calories from carbs; the AI bar sits well under the recommended bar.
The study tested teenagers only, so an adult's gap may run smaller.
Source: Today's Dietitian [14]. Chart by Ryan Elliott Dennis.
The numbers behind this chart
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| AI plans | 34% |
| Dietitians | 47.5% |
The Case for Letting AI Plan Dinner
Anirban Kundu, Instacart's chief technology officer, praised the ChatGPT partnership when it launched1. "Together, we're creating a seamless and secure way for people to turn simple conversations into real-world action," he said. His point is practical. A recipe in the chat, bought and on the doorstep, closes a loop that used to take three separate apps.
The Case Against
Dr. Ayşe Betül Bilen studies teen nutrition at Istanbul Atlas University14. She found that "diet plans generated by AI models tend to substantially underestimate total energy and key nutrient intake". Her March 2026 study tested five free AI tools: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Bing Chat and Perplexity.
Each wrote meal plans for four hypothetical teenagers. The plans also ran high in fat and low in carbs, far from what a growing teenager needs.
Her study found AI plans put 32 to 36 percent of calories in carbs, an average of 34 percent. The National Academies recommend 45 to 50 percent, an average of 47.5 percent. Fat ran as high as 45 percent of calories in the same AI plans14.
Adam Gallagher, who runs the recipe site Inspired Taste, raised a second worry on NPR in January 202615. Those answers, he said, blend ingredients from sites like his into one new, often untested version. He calls the result a Frankenstein recipe, stitched together instead of cooked and checked.
The British Dietetic Association made a related point in 2024. AI diet advice needs a dietitian's check for anyone managing a health condition16.
What to Do
Start with the job you actually have this week. Use ChatGPT or DoorDash's app when you need a cart filled and delivered fast12. Try SideChef or Samsung Food when you want the oven to follow along34. Have a dietitian check an AI meal plan for a teenager before you follow it14.
By the Numbers
- ChatGPT's Instacart app reached more than 1,800 retailers at its Dec. 8, 2025 launch1.
- AI diet plans in the Frontiers in Nutrition study ran almost 700 calories under a dietitian's plan14.
- SideChef's premium tier costs $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year3.
- PlateJoy's monthly plan costs $12.99, the priciest tier on this board8.
- Whirlpool bought Yummly in May 2017. It shut the app down in December 2024, after laying off its team that April1213.
What to Watch
Samsung keeps its 2026 price page for Food+ offline, so confirm the $6.99 figure before you subscribe5. OpenAI has stayed quiet on when Instant Checkout reaches its iOS and Android apps1. A second nutrition study on adult meal plans would show whether the carb gap holds past the teenage years14.
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Ryan's Take: Let the Robot Shop, Keep the Plan Yourself
I trust a chatbot to turn a recipe into a cart. ChatGPT and DoorDash already prove that job works, and it saves a real trip12. That part of cooking is logistics, and logistics is where AI already earns its place.
A growing kid's calorie and protein targets need a dietitian, who catches what a chatbot misses. The Frontiers study found a wide gap on that score14. A parent planning a teenager's diet still needs a dietitian in the loop. The British Dietetic Association made that same point two years earlier16.
My guess for next October: the Cart score moves fast, because checkout is a solved problem once one retailer says yes. The Taste and Plan scores move slower. A model that gets a sandwich order right can still get a teenager's calories wrong. Watch the gap between those two speeds.
The comic plays with one meal that repeats all month. A robot in Meal Prep finds out how its boy feels about that. The strip is below.
Comics
Meal Prep
A robot automates a whole month of its boy's favorite sandwich, and the boy asks it to automate something harder: a different one.
Sources
- PYMNTS, "Instacart Integrates Grocery Platform With ChatGPT," PYMNTS, Dec. 8, 2025, https://www.pymnts.com/artificial-intelligence-2/2025/instacart-integrates-grocery-platform-with-chatgpt/
- ConsumerAffairs, "DoorDash brings grocery shopping inside ChatGPT," ConsumerAffairs, Dec. 18, 2025, https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/doordash-brings-grocery-shopping-inside-chatgpt-121825.html
- SideChef, "SideChef: Easy Cooking Recipes," Apple App Store, Oct. 24, 2026, https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sidechef/id905229928
- Tool Directory, "Samsung Food," Tool Directory, Aug. 9, 2026, https://tooldirectory.ai/tools/samsung-food
- Stuff, "Samsung Food upgraded, AI app, pay for?," Stuff.co.za, Sept. 6, 2024, https://stuff.co.za/2024/09/06/samsung-food-upgraded-ai-app-pay-for/
- Google, "Gemini app extensions," Google Store, Oct. 24, 2026, https://store.google.com/gb/magazine/gemini-app-extensions
- MealFan, "Best Meal Planning Services," MealFan, Oct. 24, 2026, https://mealfan.com/best-meal-planning-services/
- Garage Gym Reviews, "PlateJoy Review," Garage Gym Reviews, Oct. 24, 2026, https://www.garagegymreviews.com/platejoy-review
- Healthline Media, "PlateJoy," Healthline, Oct. 24, 2026, https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/platejoy
- Hindsight Labs, "Paprika Recipe Manager 3 for Windows," Paprika App, Oct. 24, 2026, https://paprikaapp.com/windows/
- App Pricing Lab, "Paprika Recipe Manager 3 Price Snapshot," App Pricing Lab, Oct. 24, 2026, https://apppricinglab.com/app/apple/1303222868
- The Spoon, "Whirlpool Lays Off Entire Team for Cooking and Recipe App Yummly," The Spoon, April 3, 2024, https://thespoon.tech/whirlpool-lays-off-entire-team-for-cooking-and-recipe-app-yummly
- Wikipedia, "Yummly," Wikipedia, Oct. 24, 2026, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yummly
- Dennis Thompson, "AI-Generated Meal Plans For Dieting Teens Could Be Harmful, Study Warns," Today's Dietitian, March 24, 2026, https://www.todaysdietitian.com/teens-using-ai-meal-plans-could-be-eating-too-few-calories-equivalent-to-skipping-a-meal/
- Ayesha Rascoe, "Adam Gallagher of food blog Inspired Taste discusses the dangers of AI recipe slop," NPR, Jan. 25, 2026, https://www.npr.org/transcripts/nx-s1-5680290
- British Dietetic Association, "Can AI help you decide what to have for your dinner, as well as solve all your dietary problems?," British Dietetic Association, June 17, 2024, https://www.bda.uk.com/resource/can-ai-help-you-decide-what-to-have-for-your-dinner-as-well-as-solve-all-of-your-dietary-problems.html