# Allergens & dietary needs

> Set hard allergen constraints and dietary patterns the plan always respects.

Some food preferences are flexible, and some are not. Forkboard keeps the two apart: allergens are a hard line every plan respects, and dietary patterns shape what shows up on the board. You can set both during onboarding, and change either one any time in Preferences.

![A row of allergen tags behind a shield, with dietary pattern chips beside them.](https://forkboard.app/docs/allergens-shield.svg)

*Allergens are a hard line, on every plan.*

## Allergens are a hard line

A flagged allergen never appears in a generated plan — and that is not just the model being careful. A deterministic server check filters every dinner before it reaches your board, so the constraint holds no matter what. Allergens are never tied to your plan tier; they are honored on every dinner, on every plan, always.

1. Open Preferences (Settings, then Preferences on the web; the Preferences screen on the iPhone), or set these during onboarding under "Allergens to avoid."
2. Find the Allergens section.
3. Tap any chip to flag it: tree-nut, peanut, shellfish, fish, egg, soy, sesame, dairy, or gluten.
4. Your choice saves on its own — there is no Save button.

Those nine are the canonical set Forkboard can enforce. Common names map to them automatically — nuts becomes tree-nut, milk becomes dairy, wheat becomes gluten — but anything outside the nine is dropped rather than half-enforced. If a food is a hard no but isn't on the list, see the next section.

> Note: For a strict no-go that isn't one of the nine allergens, use "Things to avoid." It is freeform and lowercased, and the plan strongly avoids whatever you list — but it is a strong preference, not the deterministic safety guarantee that allergens get.

## Dietary patterns

Dietary patterns shape the kind of cooking the board plans around. Tap any that apply in the Dietary patterns section of Preferences (also offered during onboarding); leave it empty if none do.

- vegetarian
- vegan
- pescatarian
- gluten-free
- dairy-free
- kosher
- halal

## In a household

Allergens and dietary patterns belong to each person, not the kitchen. On a Family household every member's allergens are honored on every dinner, and everyone's diets are respected together — the plan aims for shared meals that work for the strictest needs at the table. Each person sets their own; nobody inherits a shared profile.

Related: [Setting your preferences](https://forkboard.app/docs/setting-your-preferences.md) · [Household taste blending](https://forkboard.app/docs/household-mode.md)

Canonical page: https://forkboard.app/docs/allergens-and-diets