Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains what PardEats ("PardEats," "we," "us," or "our") collects, why, the device permissions the app asks for, and the choices you have. It applies to our website at pardeats.com and to the PardEats mobile app. By using the website or the app you agree to this policy and to our Terms and Conditions.

Who we are

PardEats is a student project built by students at Lafayette College. It helps students and athletes plan campus and everyday eating around their nutrition goals, training, and recovery. We are not an incorporated company, and we do not sell any product, service, or personal information.

Health and wellness information

PardEats is a wellness and nutrition tool, not a medical service. Some of what you enter, such as your body measurements, dietary needs, training, and how you feel, is sensitive. We treat it that way. We do not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, and nothing in PardEats should replace guidance from a doctor, a registered dietitian, or your athletic trainer.

Information you give us

On the website, if you join our waitlist or newsletter, you give us your name and email address and any details you choose to include. In the app, you choose what to enter. Depending on how you use it, this can include:

• Account details. Your email address and the sign-in method you use. If you choose a third-party sign-in, we receive basic profile information such as your name and, if available, your profile photo.
• Profile. An optional display name, phone number, and photo, plus the profile you build during setup: whether you are an athlete, your sport or team, sex, birth date, height, weight, activity level, goal, and weekly pace. Coaches and dining service providers may instead create a staff account.
• Dietary needs. Your dietary preferences and any allergies you record, used to filter recommendations.
• Food and diary. Meals and foods you log, custom foods you create, foods you add by scanning a barcode or nutrition label, and any photos you attach.
• Training. Sessions you log or plan, including activity, duration, effort, exercises, sets, and personal records.
• Recovery. Sleep, mood, stress, soreness, hydration, a readiness score, and private journal entries you write.
• Body measurements. Weight entries you log over time, and an optional target weight.
• Friends and meal presence. If you use Friends, a friend code, the connections you accept, and the temporary "I am eating at this dining hall until this time" status you choose to share. There is no student-to-student chat and no activity feed.
• Feedback. Any messages or feedback you send us.

You can use much of the app without filling in everything. Optional fields can be left blank, and you can edit or remove most of your entries at any time.

Device permissions the app asks for

To provide certain features, the app asks your permission to use capabilities on your phone. We request each permission at the point a feature needs it, we explain why at that moment, and you can grant, decline, or later change any of them in your device settings. Declining a permission only turns off the features that need it; the rest of the app keeps working.

• Camera. Required to scan a barcode or a nutrition label to add a packaged food, and to take a photo of a food you log.
• Microphone. Required to log food by voice. When you tap to speak, your speech is turned into text to find the foods you named, and you confirm before anything is logged. On iPhone the speech is processed on your device; on Android it uses the phone's built-in speech recognition.
• Photos, media, and storage. Required to let you choose an image from your library to attach to a food, and to handle an image you capture so it can be scanned.
• Notifications. Required to send the reminders you turn on, and, if you opt in, to let you know when a friend is eating.
• Location. The app requires location access to power dining features, such as showing the dining locations nearest to you and confirming you are on campus. We may not request this on first launch, and we are rolling these features out over time, but the app is designed to use your location for them and will ask for this permission. Even where the app requests location, you can decline and continue to use the core features.
• Other device access. As we add features, the app may require additional permissions. We will request them at the time, describe them here, and never turn one on silently.

Barcode and nutrition-label scanning

When you scan a barcode, we look the product up to fill in its nutrition information. When you scan a nutrition label, we process a photo of the label to read the numbers from it. A label photo is used only to read the label, not to build a profile of you, and scanned values are always shown for you to confirm and edit before anything is logged.

The in-app assistant

If you use the in-app assistant, it uses automated AI to answer your questions based on information such as your goals, what you have left for the day, your dietary and allergy needs, and the relevant campus menu. We limit what is used to answer you, and we do not include identifying details such as your name, email, birth date, or journal entries. Your inputs are not used to train AI models. The assistant offers general guidance only and is not medical or dietetic advice.

Information collected automatically

We keep automatic collection deliberately narrow.

• Limited usage analytics. We record a short, fixed list of events about which features are used and how quickly screens load, so we can find and fix problems. This list cannot include your free text, your exact body weight, your exact health values, your diagnoses, your meal details, or any sign-in tokens. Durations are recorded only as broad ranges, never exact numbers.
• Basic technical data. Standard information needed to run a website and a mobile app, such as the type of request and general error information.
• Sign-in security data. When you sign in, we record your device's IP address and basic device information, so we can help keep your account secure and notice unusual activity.

We do not track you across other companies' apps or websites, and we do not use your data for advertising.

How we use your information

• To create and secure your account and sign you in.
• To calculate your daily calorie and macro targets and adjust them for the training you log.
• To recommend campus dining options that fit your targets and exclude your recorded allergens.
• To add packaged foods you scan, and to answer questions you ask the in-app assistant.
• To let you connect with friends you choose and share a temporary meal status with them.
• To keep your food, training, recovery, and weight history so you can review it.
• To send the reminders and notifications you turn on.
• To respond to your waitlist, newsletter, or feedback messages.
• To understand which features are used, using the limited analytics above, so we can improve PardEats.

A note on estimated data

Menu nutrition and allergen information is often estimated. General foods drawn from public databases, and foods you add by scanning, are labeled as having unverified allergens, and scanned values can be incomplete or wrong. We tell you this where it matters and ask you to confirm scanned values before logging. For anything allergy-critical, always confirm with dining staff or the product label. We surface these estimates to help you decide, not to guarantee them.

How we protect your information

We use reasonable measures to protect your information and to keep each account's data separate, so one user cannot see another user's data. The one deliberate exception is Friends: a temporary meal status you choose to share is visible to the specific friends you have accepted, and to no one else. No method of storage or transmission is perfectly secure, but we design around the principle of least access.

Third parties

We use a small number of trusted third-party services to operate PardEats, and some features (such as the in-app assistant and label reading) rely on third-party processing to work. These providers may process your information only to provide the service to us, not for their own purposes, and inputs to AI features are not used to train models. We do not sell your information to anyone. We may disclose information only if required by law, or to protect the safety of a person or the service.

Who can see your data

Your personal data is visible only to your own account, except for a temporary meal status you deliberately share with friends you have accepted. Other students cannot see your data. The student team behind PardEats does not browse individual accounts, and reference data such as dining menus is the same for everyone and contains nothing personal.

Keeping and deleting your data

We keep your information while your account is active so your history stays available to you. Your meal presence is temporary and expires on its own. You can delete your account from within the app, under More, then Account. Deleting your account permanently removes your profile and everything linked to it, including your food, training, recovery, weight, and journal entries. This cannot be undone. See Delete your account for details.

Who can use PardEats

PardEats is built for the Lafayette College community. During the alpha and beta, sign-up is open to anyone who wants to take part, and we may limit it again at any time. It is not intended for anyone under 13, and we do not knowingly collect information from children under 13. If you believe a child has provided us information, contact us and we will remove it.

Your choices

• Grant, decline, or change any device permission in your phone settings.
• Edit or remove most of your entries at any time in the app.
• Turn reminders and friend notifications on or off.
• Choose whether to use Friends, and clear your meal status at any time.
• Unsubscribe from our newsletter using the link in any email.
• Delete your account, which erases your data as described above.
• Contact us with any question about your information.

Changes to this policy

As PardEats grows, we will update this policy and change the date at the top. If a change is significant, we will make you aware before it takes effect.

Contact

Questions about this policy or your data can go to info@pardeats.com.