Hi there! Welcome to another issue of The Food Ninja Monthly.
TL;DR
In this month’s issue, we’ll be talking about a global event that is worth noticing (International Day of Friendship), feature insights into our records page and tips & introductions to the features there, and some tips on reducing food waste through making homemade vinegars from recycled materials. We’ll also be showcasing some metrics from our app, and talk about planned features coming in the future.
Events This July
We have one event in this July!
International Day of Friendship
This July thirtieth, try to celebrate our friendships!
Friendship holds a special kind of power. It can cross languages, faiths, and histories that might otherwise divide us. It invites us to listen before we judge, to stay when it's easier to walk away. And when nurtured across cultures and communities, friendship becomes more than a bond—it becomes a blueprint for reconciliation. It teaches us that understanding isn’t a grand achievement; it’s a habit, a practice, a way of moving through the world that says 'your well-being matters to me too'.
This year, as the world faces profound ruptures — between nations, within societies, even within families — the call to friendship is not sentimental. It’s essential. It’s about reaching across what breaks us and daring to believe in something better. It is a call to imagine a future where difference doesn’t mean distance, where trust is stronger than fear. Through friendship, we don’t just cope with the world as it is — we begin to shape the world as it could be.
Check out more here: https://www.un.org/en/observances/friendship-day.
Food Ninja App Tips
Introducing the Records Tab — Basics
Record Details
The Records Detail View
Here’s how you can create and edit records. By clicking that plus button in the top-right section of the iPad sidebar (top-right section of the iPhone page), you can initialize a new draft record. After filling in information, you can save the record, and the app will remind you before that food / item record expires!
Managing Record Locations
By opening the menu from the location field, you can press manage on the upper right section of the popup and type in a new location, then press the blue plus button to add it to your presets.
You can also achieve this through the settings tab as shown below (Settings > Locations):
Swiping
You can mark each record in the sidebar as Expired, Thrown Away, or Used by swiping its card and selecting the action.
Waste Insights
See charts and AI-powered insights for your waste records, and learn how to prevent waste. If you have no records selected on the iPad, or click the pie chart button on the top-right part of your iPhone screen, you’ll see this chart beautifully integrating into the app.
New Feature Sneak Peek
A new feature had been rolling out since last week and still gradually rolling out. This new feature is all about medication reminders, you’ll not miss a medication anymore with the help of alarms from this feature. Chats are also pinnable now.
Planned Features as of July 1st
We will be introducing the ability enable automatic syncing with iCloud between your devices (using private iCloud), add more localizations of the app and our App Store storefront, add more Siri actions, more app tips, and finally introduce iOS 27-exclusive features when iOS 27 is officially marked as stable release. In the future, we will also add support for Android apps, probably after Android 17 is officially marked as stable release, published, and broadly used. We will continue to improve the app, help you reduce all kinds of waste (food, medications, items, etc.), and maybe even create more apps to help you with your daily life.
Download our app here: https://app.food-ninja.com/ or learn more at food-ninja.com.
Metrics & Recaps From Our App
June Recap
Bugs We’ve Fixed
Fixed notification scheduling bug — twice!
Fixed unsafe methods for throwing functions not using
trycatchin codeFixed unsafe methods for force unwrapping in code
Fixed records’ category storage consistency
Using enumerations instead of hard-coded strings in
SwiftDatastorage
Fixed sidebar appearances on iOS 27 (beta)
Fixed several localization bugs
New Features We’ve Added
Added tree planting evidence
Finished planned feature (gradually rolling out already)
Added new tab, widgets, and more
Removed donation prompt chip in AI tab
Stopped maintaining the donation feature — too inaccurate and complex to maintain (feature marked as legacy now)
Records are now discardable
Added iOS 27 beta support and view consistency (modified app icon to have somewhat similar looks on iOS 27 compared to iOS 26)
Changed App Store storefront screenshots
Chats are now pinnable
Records We’ve Tracked
We have helped track 116 records in June!!!
And we have helped users track these records and 27 were successfully used up and saved from waste! 😃
Trees We’ve Planted
We've planted 1 tree in June! That makes a total of 8 mangroves we’ve planted in Kilifi, Kenya in partnership with TheGoodAPI!
With 1 tree, 1 square meter of trees are restored, 0.002 workdays are created, 0.31 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide are absorbed (throughout its lifetime), and 0.03 cars removed from the road per year! These numbers may seem small, but the more trees we aim to plant and will plant, the less the environment will suffer!
Waste Reduction Tips
The Scrap Vinegar
Instead of discarding fruit and vegetable scraps, you can often ferment them into flavorful vinegars. This is especially fantastic for fruit peels and cores, like apples, pears, or even berry scraps, but can also work with certain vegetable scraps.
Simplified Steps
Collect Scraps: Keep a jar in your fridge or freezer for clean fruit peels (e.g., apple peels, pear cores, pineapple skins) or even herb stems.
Combine: When you have a good amount, move them to a clean jar combined.
Add Sweetener & Water: Cover the scraps with water and add a tablespoon (≈ 15 mL) or two of sugar or honey (this feeds the fermentation).
Ferment: Cover the jar with cloth and let it sit at room temperature, stirring daily. After a week or two, you’ll notice bubbles and a vinegary smell.
Strain & Age: Strain out the solids and let the liquid continue to ferment for another week or two until it reaches your desired acidity.
Explanation
This transforms what would be waste into a valuable pantry staple! You get unique, homemade vinegars that are perfect for salad dressings, marinades, or even as a cleaning agent. It’s a fantastic way to extract every last bit of flavor and utility from your produce.
That’s it!
That is it for this July’s issue. See you in August! If you have any questions or suggestions, email us at [email protected]!