★4.4】"me:new", an automatic menu planning application for up to one week

Review Items	average mark
operability	5
continuity	4.5
Functions other than menu creation	5
Ease of recipe preparation	3.5
Parent and Child Taste Ratings	4
average	4.4

Key points of this article

me:new" is an application that automatically creates a family menu for up to one week.
They accommodate allergies and children's ages. They will propose a menu that takes nutrition into consideration.
It creates not only menus but also shopping lists, which is useful for weekend bulk purchases!

Participating parents with children aged 0-6 years old, as well as pre-parents and pre-moms who are expecting a baby and want to actively use technology such as gadgets, apps, and home appliances in their child-rearing.BabyTech Communityholds a monthly "Review with Everyone - Making Baby Tech More Fun".

This project aims to help community members share their experiences with various baby tech services with the goal of finding enjoyment in using baby tech in their child-rearing lives. Each time, members who have actually used one baby tech service will post a review of the service on a special website. Afterwards, they will share their impressions and usage of the service in an online roundtable discussion, which will be published as a review article on BabyTech.jp.

In this fifth issue, we introduce "me:new," an application that automatically creates menus for up to one week. Me:new automatically creates daily menus at the touch of a button, which is a problem for many people. It also provides a convenient shopping list, making bulk purchases a breeze. It also provides menu suggestions based on family preferences and children's ages. This service won the grand prize in the breastfeeding and meal category of the "BabyTech® Award Japan 2020 powered by DNP Dai Nippon Printing.

In this article, community members who have actually used MeNew review the service's operability and ease of making recipes (numerical ratings are given on a 5-point scale from a minimum of 1 to a maximum of 5). In addition, Tetsuya Nagata, CEO of PapaSmile, and community members participated in an online roundtable discussion (hereinafter referred to as "cross review talk") to discuss the review results and the appeal of MeNew!

Cross-Review Talk Participants

Sachi.
iron acid

Papa Smile Co.,Ltd
Representative Director Tetsuya Nagata

Operability: Stress-free operation of major functions such as menu planning and shopping list creation!

reviewer	Review score	Comment
Sachi.	5	Easy operations such as menu planning and shopping lists
iron acid	5	I didn't get too lost.

Nagata:Thank you very much for your time today. I would like to start the cross review talk right away!　First of all, a perfect score of 5 for "operability. Everyone rated it as very easy to use.

Sachi:Yes, I did. There was no particular point of hesitation.

I have the impression that it can be used for a long time as a collection of ideas when I'm not sure about the menu.

reviewer	Review score	Comment
Sachi.	4	I find it easy to continue because it is easy to automatically create a menu for one day to one week, and I don't have to worry about my head.
iron acid	5	It's easy to do menu planning and shopping in one place. I want to save time worrying about menu planning, so I can use it as a recipe idea when I am not sure.

Nagata:I have received comments about whether I can continue to use it for a long time, saying that I can use it as a recipe idea when I am in doubt. I also had a conversation with an acquaintance the other day, "I haven't decided what's on the menu for dinner tonight ......" "Isn't that exactly what MeNew is for! I had a conversation with an acquaintance the other day. I did not follow the menu of MeNew that day, but I tried to use the best parts from about three days' menus that had been suggested to me.

Sachi.I thought: I can come up with many menus just by adding one ingredient, and I can continue to use it for a long time in a thin way, using it when I need it.

Nagata:It's true that I probably won't be relying on the MeNew menu all the time. ......

Mr. Tetsu:If you are using it as a collection of recipe ideas, a menu site is fine when you have a set of ingredients. However, when creating a menu from scratch, an application such as MeNew would be very helpful.

The shopping list that is automatically created is just so convenient!

reviewer	Review score	Comment
Sachi.	5	When I set it to a weekly setting, I get a list of shopping items to use for a week's worth of menus all at once. It is easy to do the shopping once a week and not forget to make notes.
iron acid	5	Shopping lists are very useful

Nagata:Your shopping list was very highly rated. I think the need for bulk shopping is quite large, especially among working families these days.

Ease of making recipes] Easy recipes to make, but would like to see even easier ones, videos, and other support.

reviewer	Review score	Comment
Sachi.	4	There are no complicated processes, and many of them are easy to make, so they are easy to make.
iron acid	3	I want video as well as words.

Sachi:The recipes were very easy to make because there were only about 3-4 steps. I reduced one star because all the menus had 3-4 steps and I thought it would be helpful if there were some easy menus with 1-2 steps. ......

Nagata:It's a menu like just cut and boil.

Sachi:It can be quite time consuming if there are three or four processes for everything from main dishes to side dishes and other menu items.

Nagata:Maybe there should be a category called "easy recipes" such as salads. Or a menu that utilizes frozen foods.

Sachi:It would be nice if you could indicate something like ...... that the nutritional balance of the frozen food can be so much better by simply adding this ingredient. I learned a lot about nutrition by using MeNew this time.

The idea of seasoning with a touch of effort that ordinary households don't think of is amazing!

reviewer	Review score	Comment
Sachi.	5	Overall, the dish was well received because it is easy to make, but the seasoning is not simple, but has a delicious twist. It was also a good learning experience for my everyday seasoning.
iron acid	3	Sorry, I haven't made it yet.

Nagata:One of the best things about meenu is that I get suggestions for ingredients I don't know and unusual flavors.

Sachi:This time, I made "Asazuke (lightly-pickled cucumber mixed with salted kelp)". I usually make this with just cucumber, salted kelp, and sesame oil, but Meanyu suggested adding kelp dashi, so I tried it and it turned out to be very tasty with added saltiness and umami. It was only a small step, but it was a hit with the children. I made many other dishes, but they were all delicious.

Did you set up your menu to exclude ingredients you don't like, but they get lost in the menu?

Q: What are some of the things you have noticed after using MeNew?

reviewer	Comment
Sachi.	We are happy to be able to create menus that are unique to our family because we can input allergy and food preferences.
iron acid	I added an ingredient I didn't like and got a recipe that included it.

Nagata:You mean that the ingredients you dislike were included in the proposed menu .......

Mr. Tetsu:I am not a fan of mushrooms and that came up in a suggested recipe. After going through the tedious process of checking shiitake mushrooms, shimeji mushrooms, and various other mushroom-based ingredients one by one as dislikes, I found it on the menu at .......

Nagata:That's a little irritating (laughs).

Mr. Tetsu:Operationally speaking, I would have liked to have been able to check mushrooms all together as an ingredient I dislike.

Nagata:Indeed, it would be kind if the system could check all mushrooms at once and only uncheck those that can be eaten later. Another commenter said he was glad to be able to create a menu unique to his family by inputting food allergies and food preferences.

Sachi:My family does not have any allergies, but there is a screen in the middle of the program where you can enter your allergies, and when I tried it, it actually suggested a menu without the allergic ingredients, which I thought was wonderful .......

Nagata:Conversely, it may be useful to have a recipe for getting children to eat foods they don't like.

Sachi:It's like "Challenge Recipes."　I would appreciate it if there are dishes that have been devised to make it easier for children to eat foods that they are not fond of.

I would like to see more recipes for packed lunches for parents who are worried about their children's long vacations!

Q: What are your expectations for MeNew in the future?

reviewer	Comment
Sachi.	During summer vacation and other long vacations for children, we would like to have a lunch menu.
iron acid	Balance between accuracy of preferences and unexpected menu suggestions

Nagata:It's important to increase the "accuracy of preferences." It can be a withdrawal point from the application if you had high expectations and were betrayed by the suggestion menu.

Mr. Tetsu:Yes, it is. I also think it would be nice to have a surprise like, "I didn't know there was such a recipe!" I think it would be nice to have a surprise like that. I get bored if I keep seeing the same thing over and over again.

Nagata:It would be nice to have a menu with the same recipes at first, but with different seasonings along the way. Also, I really agree with your comment about wanting a menu for lunches during children's long vacations!

Sachi:When I searched for "bento", Meenu came up with recipes for various side dishes that can be used for bento. For me, I would have liked to see a "bento set" with sample pictures of bento and a cohesive recipe for making a single bento. I would have appreciated it even more if it included an explanation such as "The time required to make this bento is 20 minutes ......".

Nagata:It would be nice if you could use ...... to prepare a menu for a week's worth of lunches in MeNew and combine several side dishes that you made in bulk at the beginning. It would be even shorter.

Sachi:One more thing I expect from MeNew is that the menu items you propose do not necessarily have to be one main dish and two side dishes. There are times when I would like to have two main dishes, depending on the quantity of ingredients and other factors.

Nagata:Thank you very much for the various reviews. MeNew aims to support the most tedious part of cooking, in a sense, thinking of a menu.

Mr. Tetsu:I don't cook completely according to the suggestions, but MeNew saves me a lot of time by making a weekly summary menu and shopping list. In that respect, I think it's great.