How Timiya works
Every nutrition app tells you what you ate. Timiya tells you what your body absorbed. Because a plate of githeri with chai is not the same as a plate of githeri with lemon water — even though the food is identical.
Step 1: Log your meal
Snap a photo of your plate — now or at the end of the day. Timiya recognises Kenyan food from the picture, identifies what’s on the plate, and asks a few follow-up questions in a chat to clarify preparation and portions. You can also describe what you ate in your own words, or pick from common meal cards.
Snap
Take a photo of your plate — now or later from your camera roll. You can also describe what you ate or pick from common meal cards.
Recognize
Timiya identifies each item on the plate, estimates portions, and asks you to confirm before moving on.
Clarify
Meal logged
A quick chat clarifies preparation and timing — the details that change how much your body absorbs.
No barcode scanning. No American portion sizes. No guessing which of twelve “bean” entries to pick. You already take pictures of your food — now that photo does the work for you.
Step 2: See what your body absorbs
Timiya tracks every essential nutrient your body needs — all 13 vitamins, 15+ minerals, essential amino acids, fatty acids, fibre, water. For each one, it shows you two numbers: what you consumed, and what your body actually absorbed. Over days and weeks, this builds a complete nutritional profile — where you are thriving, where you are consistently falling short, and what patterns are driving the gaps.
The bioavailability layer is what makes this accurate. Spinach looks like a calcium powerhouse at 100 mg per serving — but oxalates lock away 95% of it, leaving your body with just 5 mg. Sukuma wiki delivers 10x more usable calcium. A bean stew has 6 mg of iron on paper, but unsoaked beans bind half behind phytates, and deep-fried omena loses 30–50% of its omega-3 compared to a quick stir-fry. Finger millet ugali has 12x the calcium of maize ugali. Timiya adjusts for all of this — preparation method, food combinations, timing — so the picture it builds reflects what your body actually received.
With chai during meal
With simple changes
Without changes
With changes
Your completeness score reflects what your body actually absorbed — not what was on the plate. Same food, same cost. The difference is preparation and timing.
Your profile builds with every meal
A single day of tracking tells you something. A week tells you more. A month of accumulated data reveals the patterns that no single meal snapshot ever could — and those patterns are where the real value lives.
Day 1
Needs attention
Your first meal creates your completeness ring — a single score showing what percentage of your daily nutrient targets your body actually met. Not what was on the plate. What was absorbed.
Week 1
After a week, your nutrient dashboard tracks every nutrient individually — sparklines show the trend, dual bars separate what you consumed from what your body actually absorbed, and status badges flag where you’re falling short.
Over time
Below target 20 of last 28 days
A month of data reveals what no single day ever could. The deep profile charts consumed versus absorbed over 28 days, so you can see exactly when absorption drops and when it recovers.
Pattern detected
Pattern detected
Greens cooked without oil on 20 of 28 days. On those days, vitamin A absorption dropped to near zero — beta-carotene requires fat for absorption. The spikes above are the 8 days you added oil.
Timiya reads your accumulated data for recurring preparation habits that suppress absorption. These are not guesses — they are patterns drawn from your own meals, confirmed across days and weeks.
Suggested change
Suggested change
Cook sukuma wiki and other greens in a small amount of oil. Estimated impact: from near-zero to full vitamin A absorption — enough to move from deficient to adequate within days.
Each pattern comes with one specific, affordable change — same food, same budget. The estimated impact is calculated from your own data, not a generic recommendation.
This is the longitudinal nutritional profile — not a snapshot, but a complete picture of your nutritional health that deepens with every meal you log. The longer you track, the more precise the insights become, and the more confidently Timiya can tell you which single change will have the biggest impact on your health.
Insights that grow with every meal
The daily score gets you in the door. But the real value compounds over weeks and months — patterns emerge, nudges prove themselves, and your data builds into a personal nutrition intelligence that no other app can replicate.
Deficiency trajectory
Trajectory · Iron
↑ Improving“At this rate, you’ll reach iron adequacy by mid-November.”
You were absorbing 1.8 mg/day 8 weeks ago. Today it’s 5.2 mg. The trajectory is clear — soaking beans and adding lemon are closing the gap. Six more weeks at this pace.
Trajectory · Calcium
↓ Declining“Calcium has dropped from 520 mg/day to 380 mg — less mala in your diet.”
You used to have mala 4× per week. It’s dropped to 1–2×. If this continues, you’ll fall below 300 mg within 5 weeks. Adding mala back — or substituting omena — would reverse the trend.
Seasonal patterns
Vitamin A · 12-month pattern
Your vitamin A follows mango season
Kenyan food availability is deeply seasonal. With a year of data, Timiya learns your annual nutrition rhythm and anticipates gaps before they open.
Last year this user’s vitamin A dropped sharply when mango season ended. This year, Timiya warns 3 weeks in advance and suggests orange-fleshed sweet potato as a year-round alternative — same beta-carotene, always available, very cheap.
The same pattern detection works for Ramadan fasting, holiday eating, and weekday-vs-weekend shifts. No single daily score would reveal these cycles — only the longitudinal view makes them visible.
Nudge adoption
Your changes · Past 3 months
Which suggestions stuck
You adopt preparation changes more readily than ingredient swaps. Three of three prep nudges stuck. Timiya learns what types of changes work for you and focuses future suggestions accordingly.
Your sources
Iron · Your sources
Where your iron actually comes from
Ranked by absorbed amount · not raw content
Surprise: sukuma wiki and uji contribute more weekly iron than beef — because you eat them far more often. Per-serving, beef absorbs best, but frequency wins. Your cheapest, most frequent foods are doing the heavy lifting.
These insights are only possible because Timiya tracks absorption, not just intake. A user with 6 months of consumed-vs-absorbed data has built something no other app can replicate — a personal nutrition model that deepens with every meal logged.
Per-nutrient deep-dive
Every tracked nutrient gets its own deep-dive — what happens if deficiency continues, what adequacy feels like, and a personalised path to get there based on the foods you already eat.
Health context
Iron · If deficiency continues
Extended iron deficiency depletes your body’s stored reserves first. Then you may notice: fatigue and low energy, difficulty concentrating, shortness of breath during normal activity, pale skin and brittle nails. Prolonged deficiency leads to iron-deficiency anemia — when blood can’t carry enough oxygen to your tissues.
26% of Kenyan women of reproductive age are anemic. Iron deficiency is the leading cause.
Most nutrition apps stop at “you’re low in iron.” Timiya explains what that actually means for your body — in plain language, grounded in clinical evidence. The health context card connects the numbers to symptoms you might already be noticing, and grounds the insight in local epidemiology, not a generic global average.
Iron · When adequate
Adequate iron means your blood carries oxygen efficiently to every cell. You feel more energised, think more clearly, and recover faster from physical exertion. Your immune system functions at full capacity. For women of reproductive age, adequate iron stores before pregnancy reduce the risk of complications.
Motivation through aspiration, not just risk avoidance.
Fear motivates once. Aspiration sustains. Both cards appear together in the app — one shows the cost of staying deficient, the other the reward of reaching adequacy. When a nutrient reaches adequate status, the deficiency card disappears and the adequacy card becomes a quiet confirmation.
Path to adequacy
Iron · Your path to adequacy
Three changes, based on foods you already eat
Continue soaking beans
Already adopted — contributing +2.1 mg absorbed zinc/day
Add lemon to all lentil meals
You do this 58% of the time. Doing it consistently would add ~1.2 mg absorbed iron/week.
Move chai to between meals
Highest-impact change you haven’t sustained. Would recover ~1.5 mg iron/day.
All three changes together would bring you to 67% of target — up from 26% currently. Closing the remaining gap would require adding an iron-rich food you don’t currently eat (omena or liver).
Timiya doesn’t just diagnose — it builds a personalised plan from the foods you already buy and cook. No new ingredients, no supplements, no extra cost.
Each change is ranked by impact and tracked over time. The status badges update automatically: “Active” means Timiya sees you doing it consistently, a percentage shows partial adoption, and “Not active” flags the biggest opportunity you haven’t started.
The progress bar shows the projected impact if all changes stick — and honestly tells you when the remaining gap requires adding a new food entirely. No false promises.
Built on decades of research. Delivered as a daily tool.
Tannins blocking iron. Oxalates trapping calcium. Fat enabling carotenoid absorption. Fermentation destroying phytates. Heme iron enhancing non-heme uptake. Pressure-cooking denaturing trypsin inhibitors. Vitamin C doubling mineral absorption when co-ingested. Calcium competing with iron at the same meal. None of this is new — it is documented in decades of WHO, FAO, and peer-reviewed research.
What has never existed is a consumer product that applies it personally. One that watches your meals over weeks and months, learns which nutrients are falling short, traces the cause to specific preparation habits, and builds a path to adequacy from the foods you already buy. That is what Timiya builds.
A single meal gives you a score. A month reveals patterns — seasonal gaps, preparation-method impacts, which foods carry the most absorbed value. A year builds a personal nutrition model that no other app can replicate, because no other app tracks absorption.
We say “may” when the evidence is suggestive. We say “does” when it is established. We do not overstate. We do not simplify into nonsense. And we never ask you to buy something new — we start with what you already eat.
Ready to see what you actually absorb?
Timiya is coming soon. Join the waitlist and be among the first to see what your body actually receives from the food you already eat.
Join the waitlist