Editorial Policy

Last updated April 21, 2026

This document describes how content moves from a tester's notebook to a published Calorie Tracker Lab page. Every page on the site is produced under this workflow; if any step is skipped or compressed, the piece does not ship.

Editorial workflow

1. Drafting. The writer (typically Cormac for comparisons and migration guides, Vincent for flagship head-to-heads, Riley for free-tier and pricing pieces) produces a first draft against the lab's tested data. Drafts that are not built on primary testing data are rejected at this stage and never reach review.
2. Senior editor review. Cormac, as Senior Editor, reviews every comparison, best-of list, review, and migration guide for editorial quality, voice consistency, factual claims that need a citation, and absence of affiliate-bait language. Cormac also runs structural edits — what gets cut, what gets reordered, what needs a sub-section.
3. Methodology director review. Naomi reviews any piece that touches a clinical, scientific, or nutrition-science claim. This includes — non-exhaustively — protein-leverage discussion, GLP-1 nutrition framing, micronutrient claims, body-composition rhetoric, MAPE interpretation, and any reference to disordered-eating risk. Naomi has gating authority and has used it.
4. Editor-in-chief sign-off. Vincent gives final sign-off on every published piece. For most pieces this is a 5-minute pass. For ranked content (head-to-heads, best-ofs, single-app reviews with a published 100-point score), Vincent's sign-off is dual-tester: Vincent is also the Lead Tester, so he is signing off on whether the score reflects what he saw in the testing protocol.

For benchmark-driven content, Yuki adds a fifth checkpoint: statistical review. If a published piece reports a MAPE, a confidence interval, or a sample-size claim, Yuki signs off on the math before the prose ships.

Re-test cadence

Apps move. Pricing changes; databases improve; AI models get retrained. Our re-test schedule is published on the methodology page and summarized here:

• Top-5 apps in any active ranking: re-tested quarterly.
• Apps ranked 6 or below: re-tested semi-annually.
• Single-app reviews not in a current ranking: re-tested every 12 months minimum.
• Major-release re-tests: triggered within 30 days of a vendor-announced model retraining or major UX overhaul.

Every page carries a "last updated" date. If a date is older than the cadence above, the page is overdue and we treat it as a quality issue. Readers who notice an overdue page should email corrections@.

Source quality standards

Every claim of fact on the site falls into one of four buckets:

• Primary lab testing. Anchored to our weighed-meal battery, photo battery, or pricing primary research. The test logs are dated and archived; every score traces to a specific test session.
• Vendor-published primary source. App-store listing, app-version changelog, vendor pricing page, vendor-published nutrition database documentation. We use these for non-controversial facts (current pricing, current platform availability) and we date-stamp the access.
• Peer-reviewed literature. RCTs, prospective cohorts, validation studies, meta-analyses. Used for any clinical claim. Naomi gates these.
• Authority body publications. USDA FoodData Central, NIH, FDA, position statements from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, ACSM, ISSN, etc. Cited explicitly when relied upon.

Marketing material, vendor blog posts, and unverifiable third-party claims are not cited as primary evidence. We may reference them when explicitly discussing what an app claims about itself, but we do not extend their assertions to the readers as facts.

Conflict of interest policy

No contributor may hold equity, accept honoraria, or serve in an advisory capacity to any app reviewed on this site. We do not currently maintain affiliate accounts with any of the apps we review (see affiliate disclosure). Contributors who develop a disclosable relationship — for instance, a paid speaking engagement at a vendor conference — must disclose it in writing to Vincent and recuse from the affected coverage.

We accept review-unit access (free premium accounts, beta access) on the same terms as the public press list. We do not accept paid trips, paid review-unit hardware (rings, watches, scales), or any compensation in exchange for coverage. Where a piece relies on a complimentary premium account, we say so in the piece.

Corrections

Corrections policy is published in full on the corrections page. Summary: we acknowledge factual errors within 72 hours, publish a visible correction notice on the affected page, and log every correction publicly with date, page, and what changed. We do not silently edit substantive errors out of pages.

Reader feedback

Reader emails about specific pieces, methodology critique, and tips about app changes go to editor@calorietrackerlab.com. We read every message; we cannot respond to all of them, but the categories that always get a response are corrections, methodology critiques, and tips that lead to an out-of-cycle re-test.

Use of AI

Our use of AI tools is documented on the how we use AI page. AI tools are used for research summarization, citation finding, and copy editing. AI is not used to generate primary text, scores, rankings, or claims. Every page on this site is written and signed off by named human contributors.