What Should I Eat?

What Should I Eat? ends the nightly stare into an open fridge. Tell it the mood you are in, optionally a cuisine, the meal you are cooking for, how much time you really have and any dietary rule you follow, and it draws one dish out of a curated database of 78 meals across 12 cuisines. Crucially it does not just roll a dice: every dish is scored against your mood first, so the random draw happens among dishes you were already likely to say yes to.

Have a goal? Choose Lighter, High protein, Before a workout, After a workout or Feeling unwell and only dishes that suit it are drawn. Then open a recipe or find the dish near you in one tap, or press Plan My Week for seven dinners and one shopping list.

What Makes This Different From a Random Meal Generator

A plain random meal generator answers a question nobody actually has. You do not need any meal — you need a meal that fits the fact that it is 21:40, you are exhausted, and there is a courgette that needs using. This picker works in three stages instead of one:

1. Hard filters. Cuisine, meal slot, time available and diet remove dishes that are simply not on the table tonight.
2. Mood scoring. Each surviving dish gets a 0–100 score for how well it matches your mood. An exact tag match scores 100; a related mood, for example a hearty dish when you asked for comfort, scores partial credit.
3. Weighted random draw. The top eight go on a shortlist, and one is drawn at random with each dish weighted by the square of its mood score. Great matches usually win, but nothing on the shortlist has zero chance.

That last step is the important one. If the tool simply showed you the best-scoring dish it would be a ranking, and you would scroll it like every other list. Because the winner is genuinely drawn at random, it functions as a decision — and the odds chart shows you exactly what chance every other dish had.

The Eight Moods

What Is Inside the Dish Database

Every dish carries the same six pieces of information, which is what lets the picker match on all of them at once rather than just on cuisine.

Cuisines Covered

Why Random Beats Scrolling for Food Decisions

Deciding what to eat is a textbook case of choice overload. Every recipe you scroll past raises your expectation of the recipe you have not seen yet, so the decision keeps getting postponed — and the longer it is postponed, the hungrier and less patient you get, which is exactly how a 40-minute search ends in toast.

A random pick converts an open-ended search into a single closed question: yes or no. People answer that in seconds. And a "no" is not a failure — your gut reaction to a random suggestion is often the fastest way to discover what you actually wanted. If the picker says salad and you are disappointed, you wanted something hearty; reroll with that mood selected and you will land it in one more click.

What Should I Eat for My Goal?

Calories are rough per-serving estimates and the goals are everyday guidance, not medical or diet advice.

Plan a Week of Dinners

If the question comes up every evening, answer it once. Plan My Week picks seven different dinners that fit your mood, diet, goal and time, never puts the same cuisine on two nights in a row when it can avoid it, and merges the ingredients into one shopping list, marking items you need for more than one dinner. Shuffle until the week looks right, copy it to your phone, or print it for the fridge door.

How to Use What Should I Eat?

1. Choose your mood. Tap one of the eight mood chips. This is the control that matters most — everything else only narrows the pool.
2. Narrow it if you want. Set the cuisine, the meal, how much time you have, and your dietary rule. Leaving them all on "any" is perfectly fine.
3. Press Pick My Meal. One dish is drawn from the weighted shortlist.
4. Read the verdict card. Check the mood, speed and lightness meters, the ingredients you need, and the timeline showing when you will actually be eating.
5. Reroll or surprise yourself. Reroll keeps your filters and draws again; Surprise Me drops everything except your diet. Both are ordinary links, so you can bookmark or share any pick.
6. Rule dishes out. Press Not this one and the picker never offers that dish again in this run.
7. Plan the week. Press Plan My Week for seven dinners and a shopping list you can print or copy.

Tips for Getting a Pick You Will Accept

• Be honest about the time. Setting "Under 20 minutes" when you mean it is the single biggest improvement to the quality of the pick.
• Use the late night slot. It surfaces the small set of dishes that are genuinely reasonable at 23:00 instead of a roast.
• Set the diet even if it is only for tonight. It is the one filter that is never relaxed, so it is the most reliable way to steer the result.
• Let two people take turns rerolling. First person to accept a dish wins, which resolves the "I don't mind, you choose" deadlock faster than any discussion.
• Save the link. Every pick has a seed in the address, so a dish you liked can be bookmarked and reopened exactly as it was.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does the What Should I Eat picker choose a dish?

First it removes every dish that fails a hard filter: the cuisine, the meal slot, your time limit and your dietary rule. Then it scores each surviving dish from 0 to 100 on how well it matches the mood you picked, keeps the best eight as a shortlist, and draws one winner at random with each dish weighted by the square of its mood score. That means a great mood match is much more likely to win, but every dish on the shortlist keeps a real, non-zero chance, so it is a genuine random pick rather than a sorted best-match list.

Why does the picker ask for my mood instead of just picking randomly?

Because a purely random dish is easy to reject. The reason people scroll for forty minutes is not that they lack options, it is that they cannot name what they want. Mood is the fastest way to name it: cozy comfort, light and fresh, spicy kick, hungry and hearty, too tired to cook, something new, healthy reset or treat yourself. Once the mood is fixed the pick lands close enough to what you wanted that you accept it, which is the whole point of a decision tool.

Will I get the same dish if I reload the page?

Yes. Every pick is tied to a seed number in the page address, so reloading or sharing that link always shows the same dish. That is deliberate: it means you can send a friend the exact meal the picker chose. To get a different dish, click Reroll, which loads the same filters with a fresh seed.

What happens if nothing matches my filters?

The picker loosens your filters one step at a time and tells you which one it relaxed. It drops the time limit first, then the meal slot, then the cuisine. It never relaxes your dietary setting, because a diet is a real constraint rather than a preference, so a vegan filter stays a vegan filter no matter what.

How many dishes and cuisines are in the picker?

Seventy-eight dishes across twelve cuisines: Italian, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Thai, American, Mediterranean, Korean, Middle Eastern, French and Vietnamese. Each dish carries its total time from standing up to eating, an approximate calorie figure per serving, its key ingredients, and the moods it suits, so the picker can match on all of them at once.

Can I use it to decide what to order rather than what to cook?

Yes. Press Order it near me under the pick and a map search opens for that dish near you, or set the time filter to Any amount of time and treat the result as a dish to search for on a delivery app. The Weekend project and Proper cooking dishes in particular are often better ordered than cooked on a weeknight, and the ingredient list tells you what the dish should actually contain when it arrives.

What should I eat when I am sick?

Warm, soft and gentle food is easiest: chicken noodle soup, congee, miso soup with rice, pho, wonton soup or dal with rice. Choose the Feeling unwell goal and the picker keeps only dishes like these. Drink plenty of fluids, and follow your doctor’s advice if you feel very unwell.

What should I eat before or after a workout?

One to two hours before training, eat easy carbs with a little protein, such as overnight oats, banana and peanut butter toast, a smoothie bowl or onigiri. Afterwards, combine protein and carbs, such as a chicken, rice and broccoli bowl, a salmon teriyaki bowl or a burrito bowl. The Before a workout and After a workout goals pick from exactly these lists.

Can it plan my dinners for the whole week?

Yes. Press Plan My Week and the picker chooses seven different dinners that fit your filters, avoids the same cuisine two nights running, and adds up one shopping list for all of them. You can shuffle the week, copy the plan and list to your phone, or print it. Free printouts carry a light MiniWebtool watermark; Pro members print them clean.

Additional Resources

• Overchoice (choice overload) - Wikipedia
• Decision Fatigue - Wikipedia
• List of Cuisines - Wikipedia