§05 · Questions · asked often enough to write down
FAQ.
Short answers, no mystique. 31 recipes, 75 ingredients, one spreadsheet.
01 Is it really always lentils?
The tagline is a joke, but it keeps being a defensible one. Lentils sit at or near the top of every nutrition-density dataset we track (see Sources), they cost almost nothing, they keep for years, and they need no soaking. If our data ever stops pointing at lentils, we'll change the tagline — and log it in the changelog.
02 I hate lentils. Does this site work for me?
Yes. The pantry has 75 ingredients and lentils are just two of them. Every recipe lists its ingredients up front, so skipping the lentil dishes is easy. We'll quietly judge you, but only a little.
03 Can I use this outside the U.S.?
Mostly. The nutrition data and the recipes travel fine. Cost figures are U.S. retail and won't map cleanly to other markets — treat relative cost comparisons as more portable than absolute prices.
04 Why does the pantry include frozen and fresh vegetables?
Because the pantry is defined by what every recipe is allowed to use — not by shelf. Frozen produce and hardy fresh vegetables (carrots, cabbage, onions, garlic) restock on the same slow cadence as the dry goods, so they're full members of the list.
05 How often does anything change?
The pantry list and methodology change rarely and deliberately. Any change that moves a score, a ranking, or the qualifying list bumps the version number in the top bar and gets a changelog entry on Sources, so you can always see what moved and why.
06 Is this medical or dietetic advice?
No. It's a cooking system built on published nutrition research, with every claim cited so you can check our work. If you have a clinical condition, your dietitian outranks our spreadsheet.
07 Do you take corrections?
Enthusiastically. If you find a miscited claim, a broken source, or a number that doesn't hold up, tell us — we'll fix it and log the fix.