My son has epilepsy. For years now, we've managed his condition through a medical ketogenic diet—a precisely calculated therapeutic approach that can reduce seizures when medications alone aren't enough. As both a father and a software engineer, I've spent countless hours with calculators, spreadsheets, and food scales, constantly frustrated that the computer should be doing more of this work. The tools just didn't seem to exist.
That frustration became the driving force behind Ketosistant.
The Daily Reality of Medical Ketogenic Diets
When people hear "ketogenic diet," they often think of trendy weight loss plans. Medical ketogenic diets are entirely different. They're prescribed treatments for serious conditions like epilepsy, where maintaining precise ratios of fats to proteins and carbohydrates can literally prevent seizures.
Every meal requires exact calculations. A 3:1 ketogenic ratio means 3 grams of fat for every 1 gram of protein plus carbohydrates combined. Miss the target by too much, and you risk breaking ketosis—potentially triggering seizures. The margin for error is essentially zero.
As a parent, you become part dietitian, part mathematician, part data analyst. You weigh everything to the gram, calculate ratios constantly, and maintain detailed logs. It's exhausting, especially when you're already dealing with the stress of managing your child's medical condition.
The Tools That Don't Exist
I searched everywhere for software that could help. Mainstream nutrition apps are designed for people tracking calories or general macros—they round numbers, approximate values, and focus on totals rather than precise ratios. None of them understood what a medical ketogenic diet actually requires.
What I needed was:
- Exact ratio calculations: Not just macro totals, but precise therapeutic ratios
- Recipe optimization: When I want to modify a favorite recipe, automatically rebalance the ingredients to maintain the correct ratios
- Medical-grade data: Reliable, consistent nutritional information—not crowdsourced guesses
- Multi-client support: As a caregiver, I need to manage my son's diet separately from the rest of the family
- Professional integration: Easy sharing with dietitians and medical teams
These tools simply didn't exist. Every meal was a manual calculation, every recipe modification meant starting from scratch with a calculator.
When Engineering Meets Parenting
As a software engineer, I knew computers excel at exactly these kinds of problems—complex calculations, optimization constraints, data management. The frustration of spending precious family time on tedious math that a computer could do instantly became unbearable.
I started building Ketosistant not as a business idea, but as a solution to my own daily struggle. Every feature came from a real need:
"Why can't I just click a button and have the computer rebalance this recipe for a different ratio?"
That frustration led to the autobalancing algorithm—evolutionary computation that optimizes ingredient weights to hit exact ketogenic ratios while keeping recipes practical and enjoyable.
"Why do I have to manually recalculate every single recipe when the doctor adjusts my son's ratio?"
This became the bulk recipe rebalancing feature—change your target ratio once, and automatically update all your recipes.
Building the Tool I Wished I Had
Every design decision in Ketosistant reflects the reality of being a medical caregiver:
Medical-grade precision: I integrated the complete USDA Food Data Central database—over 100,000 foods with verified nutritional data. No more wondering if the app's numbers are accurate enough for medical purposes.
Cross-platform access: Medical families need their tools everywhere—in the kitchen while cooking, at the grocery store while shopping, at medical appointments. I chose Rust and Dioxus to build once and deploy to web, desktop, and mobile with mathematical precision maintained everywhere.
Caregiver-focused workflow: The interface assumes you're managing someone else's diet, because that's the reality for most medical ketogenic diet families. Parents, grandparents, and healthcare providers are the actual users, not the patients themselves.
The Personal Stakes
This isn't just another software project for me. When I'm debugging the autobalancing algorithm at midnight, I'm thinking about making breakfast easier for my son the next morning. When I'm optimizing database queries, I'm thinking about reducing the time other parents spend on meal calculations.
Every parent dealing with their child's medical ketogenic diet knows that feeling of constant vigilance—checking ratios, monitoring ketosis, worrying about every meal. Technology should reduce that burden, not add to it.
What's Next
Ketosistant is currently in alpha testing with families and medical professionals. The feedback has been incredible, with parents telling me they're spending 90% less time on meal calculations and feeling more confident about their recipes.
Next, I'm working on AI-powered recipe generation specifically trained on therapeutic dietary requirements. Imagine describing what your child wants for lunch and getting back a perfectly balanced ketogenic recipe that meets their exact ratio requirements.
I'm also building tools for healthcare providers—dietitians and doctors who manage multiple patients need efficient ways to monitor and support families using medical ketogenic diets.
For Other Families Like Ours
If you're managing a medical ketogenic diet for your child, you know exactly what I'm talking about. The hours with the calculator, the stress about getting ratios right, the frustration when existing apps just don't understand what you need.
Ketosistant exists because of families like ours. Every feature is built from real experience managing real medical diets. It's designed by someone who has spent years doing exactly what you're doing now, and who believes technology should make this easier, not harder.
I'd love to hear from other families managing medical ketogenic diets, or healthcare providers working with these families. Your experiences and needs continue to shape every feature we build.
Because ultimately, this isn't about building better software—it's about giving families more time together and less time fighting with calculators.
Adam is the founder of Ketosistant and a software engineer who has managed his son's medical ketogenic diet for years. When he's not coding, he's probably testing new recipe optimization algorithms or reading research papers about therapeutic diets.