Allergies are rules, not suggestions: how Tonight keeps plates safe

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Feeding a table with an allergy in it changes how you shop, how you cook and how you sleep. You read every label, twice. You remember which brand of stock has milk in it. You keep an eye on the guest who says “it's probably fine.” A dinner app that treats any of that casually doesn't deserve a Tuesday.

So here is exactly how Tonight handles safety, including the places where it stops.

Rules, not suggestions

Every person at your table has their own profile. You add their allergies and how serious each one is, plus any intolerances, diets and religious rules such as halal, kosher, no pork or no alcohol. Those are stored as rules for that person, not as tags to be weighed against how good a dish sounds. A tempting name and a beautiful photo don't get a vote.

Then the check happens, and it's done by plain code. Not a language model, not a score, no weighing. A dish either passes for every person who's eating or it never reaches your week. Nothing in the taste, time or variety steps can pull an unsafe dish back in, because those steps only ever see dishes that already passed. Every dish that's left out is logged with the rule that removed it.

A dish either passes for every person who's eating or it never reaches your week.

Ingredient by ingredient, hidden sources included

The check runs on ingredients, not dish names. A dinner called “simple pasta” isn't judged by its title, it's judged by what goes into it. That matters because allergens hide: milk in a stock or a spread, egg in fresh pasta, soy in a marinade, wheat in the thing you'd never think to check. Tonight flags allergens on each ingredient, so the check doesn't depend on what a recipe is called or how it's tagged. Substitutions count too. If a recipe's default swap would bring in an allergen for someone at your table, the dish is checked as though that allergen were already in it.

And when the data is unsure, the answer is no. If an ingredient might carry an allergen, the dish doesn't make the cut. We would rather leave out a dish that was fine than include one that wasn't. If you ever wonder why a perfectly ordinary dinner never shows up, that's the caution doing its job.

Severity, diets and religious rules

Not every allergy asks the same thing of a kitchen, so each one carries a severity. The setting belongs to the allergy, not the person: someone can be strict about peanuts while simply avoiding sesame.

• Avoid: the ingredient stays out. Any dish that contains it is excluded for that person.
• Strict: everything in avoid, plus any dish whose own notes flag a cross-contact risk, such as shared equipment or a shared surface.

If you aren't sure which to choose, choose strict, and ask your doctor or allergist what your household needs. Strict excludes more dishes, and that's the safer direction to be wrong in.

Halal, kosher, no pork, no alcohol, vegetarian and other diets work the same way: as rules attached to a person and checked before anything else. A table that doesn't eat pork never sees a dish with pork in it. There is one honest limit. Whether the meat itself was sourced to your standard is something only the pack or your butcher can tell you, so for halal and kosher households Tonight puts a visible note on meat dishes rather than pretending to know.

When the rules change mid-week

Life doesn't wait for planning day. A friend's child comes to stay for the week, so you add them. You learn about a new allergy in your own family. Plans made on Sunday suddenly have a hole in them.

When you add a person or an allergy, the week checks itself again straight away. Any night whose dish is no longer safe is replaced with one that is. If you had locked that night, the lock is released, and Tonight tells you so instead of quietly leaving a bad dinner in place. You shouldn't have to remember to re-check a week that looked fine on Sunday. Tonight does it for you.

This is the moment many plans fall apart, because they were made when the old facts were true. Tonight treats the week as something that can turn out to be wrong and needs another look, so the week you open on Thursday reflects your table as it is on Thursday.

The label on the pack still matters

Here's the part we won't gloss over. Tonight is a planning tool, not medical advice, and it isn't a guarantee. Manufacturers change recipes. A brand that was fine last month may not be this month. The ingredient data behind the check is a best effort, which is exactly why Tonight leans toward leaving things out. It checks the recipe. It can't see the pack you actually bought, the spoon that touched something else, or a kitchen habit that needs changing.

The pack in your hand is the final word. For serious allergies, read the label on everything you buy, every time, and follow the advice of your doctor or allergist. What Tonight can do is take the weekly choosing off your shoulders, so your attention goes where it counts: the label, and the person you're feeding.

If you'd like a dinner app that treats your table's rules as rules, Tonight is free to try for 7 days.