Most households with more than two or three people don't have one set of dietary needs — they have several, overlapping only partially. One person has a nut allergy. Another's avoiding dairy. A grandparent visiting for dinner has a restriction nobody quite remembers the details of. Planning meals for a household like that by memory means somebody eventually gets it wrong.
This page describes a household organization system, not medical guidance. For anything medically serious, follow what an allergist or doctor has specifically told your household to do.
Track it per person, not per household
A single household-wide list of "things we don't eat" flattens real differences. What actually matters is which restriction belongs to which person — because a dish that's fine for four people and a problem for the fifth needs to be flagged specifically, not lumped into a vague household-wide no.
In Fam to Table, allergens and dietary considerations live on each person's own profile, including kids and other household members who don't have their own login. Add them once, and every recipe and every planned meal gets checked against the full list automatically from then on.
Separate "can't" from "won't"
Not every restriction carries the same weight. A medical allergy and a strong preference are both real, but they're not the same kind of real — and treating them identically either causes people to tune out genuine warnings or makes ordinary pickiness feel like a crisis every time.
A two-tier system handles this better than one flat list: mark anything medically serious so it shows up as a clear, high-visibility warning wherever that meal appears, and let preferences show up as a lighter flag. That way a red warning always means something specific, instead of being one more item in a wall of caveats nobody reads closely.
Filter before you plan, not after
The best time to catch a conflict is before a meal goes on the calendar, not after it's cooked. A filter that hides anything conflicting with any household member's restrictions — an "OK for everyone" view of the recipe library — turns allergy-checking from a manual step you have to remember into something that's just already true by the time you're choosing what to make.
Keep it visible where decisions actually happen
A restriction that only lives on a profile page nobody opens might as well not exist. It needs to surface at the exact moment someone's picking a meal — on the recipe card, on the calendar, wherever the actual decision is being made — not buried one screen away from where it matters.
Set up this way, tracking allergies stops being a thing one person has to hold in their head and remember to mention. It becomes a property of the meal itself, checked automatically, every time.