Every US Nutrition Facts panel carries the same quiet assumption in its footnote: 2,000 calories a day, "used for general nutrition advice." Nobody assigned that number to you. It's a reference frame — a shared yardstick so that "20% Daily Value" means the same thing on a cereal box in Ohio and a soup can in Oregon.
Nutrication borrows that frame for its day grade, and for a good reason: individual food grades can't see a whole day. A bowl of miso soup, a deli sandwich, and a frozen dinner can each look defensible on its own label and still stack up to far more sodium than any mainstream guideline suggests. No single scan catches that. Only the day can.
So the app grades the day too — against a default reference day of 2,000 kcal, 250 g of carbohydrate, 100 g of protein, 70 g of fat, at least 30 g of fiber, at most 50 g of sugar, and at most 2,300 mg of sodium. Here's where those numbers come from, exactly how the math works, and when you should change them.
The reference day, by the numbers
| Target | Default | Type | At 2,000 kcal |
|---|---|---|---|
| Calories | 2,000 kcal | Reference | The frame everything else scales to |
| Carbohydrate | 250 g | Steering target | 50% of calories |
| Protein | 100 g | Steering target | 20% of calories |
| Fat | 70 g | Steering target | About 32% of calories |
| Fiber | 30 g | Floor — reach it | Slightly above the FDA's Daily Value |
| Sugar | 50 g | Cap — stay under | 10% of calories |
| Sodium | 2,300 mg | Cap — stay under | The limit US guidance tells adults to stay below |
The arithmetic is deliberately boring. Carbohydrate at 250 g supplies half the day's calories; protein at 100 g supplies a fifth; fat covers roughly a third. All three sit comfortably inside the macronutrient ranges US dietary guidance has used for decades. The 50 g sugar cap is the widely cited ceiling of 10% of calories, applied to a 2,000-kcal day. The 2,300 mg sodium cap matches the daily limit recommended by the FDA. And the 30 g fiber floor sits a touch above the official Daily Value — a nudge in the direction most people need, since the average American diet lands well short of it.
One number deserves a comment: 100 g of protein is more than the bare-minimum RDA for most adults. That's intentional. The RDA is a floor to prevent deficiency, not an optimum, and a higher protein target tends to serve satiety and muscle maintenance better for people actively managing their diet.
Caps, floors, and steering targets are three different jobs
Look at the Type column again, because the distinction does real work.
A cap is a ceiling. Sugar and sodium earn nothing for coming in low — there is no prize for eating 4 g of sugar — but crossing the line costs you. A floor is the mirror image: fiber is a goal to reach, overshooting it is fine, and hitting it is rewarded. The steering targets — calories, carbs, protein, fat — are progress bars. They tell you where you are, but missing them never moves the day grade in either direction. Hitting your protein number is your goal, not a grading event.
That asymmetry mirrors the evidence. The nutrients people systematically overconsume get ceilings; the one nearly everyone underconsumes gets a floor and a bonus. The sodium guide makes the full case for why salt earns a ceiling — and fiber gets its special treatment for exactly the opposite reason.
How the day grade is computed
Two steps, both simple enough to check by hand.
Step one: a calorie-weighted quality average. Every food you log already has a 0–100 score and letter grade from the six-framework scan — the same grade explained in how we grade. The day's quality score is the mean of those scores, weighted by each food's calories. A 600-kcal dinner moves the average fifteen times as much as a 40-kcal snack, so a day of grazing on candy can't hide behind one virtuous salad.
Step two: three context modifiers. After the average, exactly three adjustments can fire:
- −5 points if the day's sodium total exceeds the cap
- −5 points if the day's sugar total exceeds the cap
- +3 points if the day's fiber total reaches the floor
The net swing runs from −10 to +3, the result is clamped to 0–100, and the letter uses the same bands as individual foods: A at 80 or above, B at 65, C at 45, D below that. Concretely:
- A day averaging 82 (an A) that busts the sugar cap lands at 77 — a B day.
- A day averaging 63 (a C) that reaches 30 g of fiber lands at 66 — promoted to B.
- A day averaging 74 that breaks both caps drops to 64 — down to C.
- A day averaging 85 with both caps respected and the fiber floor hit finishes at 88 — a stronger A.
Each modifier comes with a plain-language note — "Sodium cap exceeded by 480mg," "Fiber goal hit (32g)" — so the grade is never a mystery. And the individual food scores are never touched. A food's grade stays the objective "is this food clean" signal; the day grade is the only place meal context enters the math.
Why the swing is capped at −10/+3
Because food quality should dominate. A day built on D-grade foods can't be rescued by a fiber supplement, and a day of A-grade foods isn't wrecked by one salty dinner — it drops a notch, with a note explaining why. The modifiers are a tiebreaker layer, not a second judge. If the caps could swing the grade by 30 points, you'd be tempted to game totals instead of picking better foods, which is backwards.
One honest nuance: the sugar cap counts total grams. An apple's sugar counts toward your 50 g even though the apple's own grade doesn't penalize naturally occurring sugar — that distinction is covered in added vs. natural sugar. In practice, whole fruit almost never busts the cap by itself. Sweetened drinks and desserts do.
Tuning the targets to your goal
The defaults are a reference day, not a verdict on your life. Every number is editable in the Calendar's goals sheet, and the cap-and-floor logic works identically whatever values you set. Some sensible starting points:
- Losing fat: lower the calorie target — say 1,700 kcal — and keep protein at 100 g or higher. In a deficit, protein per calorie is the number that matters most.
- Building muscle: raise protein toward 120–140 g and let calories climb with it. Leave the caps alone; bulking is not a sodium exemption.
- Endurance training: push carbohydrate up — 300 g or more on heavy days — and keep the fiber floor where it is.
- Watching blood pressure: lower the sodium cap to whatever number your clinician has given you. The grade math will enforce it automatically.
- Cutting sugar hard: halve the cap to 25 g and let the −5 penalty do the nagging for you.
Change one number at a time and live with it for a couple of weeks before touching another. And if you're managing a medical condition, the targets should come from your doctor or a registered dietitian — the app enforces your numbers; it doesn't prescribe them.
How Nutrication uses this
The Calendar logs everything you scan into five slots: breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner, and a dedicated drinks slot. Drinks are separated on purpose — beverages used to hide inside "snack," and their often-large sugar and calorie load now shows as its own line on the day. (Why that matters is the whole subject of liquid calories.)
Every logged food keeps the grade it earned at scan time. The day grade is then recomputed live: the calorie-weighted average of those scores, plus the three modifiers — −5 for a busted sodium cap, −5 for a busted sugar cap, +3 for a reached fiber floor — clamped to 0–100 and mapped to the same A–D bands as individual foods. If a product's label reports salt instead of sodium, the app converts it at the standard factor (sodium is 40% of salt by weight) so the cap still works. Your goals live on your device, start at the reference defaults — 2,000 kcal, 250 g carbs, 100 g protein, 70 g fat, 30 g fiber, 50 g sugar, 2,300 mg sodium — and every one of them is yours to change.
What to actually do
- Log everything, drinks included — the drinks slot exists because liquid sugar hides.
- Respect the two caps, chase the one floor: under 50 g sugar, under 2,300 mg sodium, at least 30 g fiber — or your tuned versions of those numbers.
- Let food quality do most of the work. Pick mostly A and B foods and the day largely grades itself; the modifiers only move it a notch.
- Tune targets once, deliberately, when your goal changes — not weekly.
- If a clinician has given you a limit for sodium or sugar, set your cap to that number and let the app enforce it.