The gap between what you eat and what you absorb

A Kenyan eating githeri with sukuma wiki and chai could be eating enough iron on paper, but taking in much less of it. Tea with a meal may block some of the iron. Phytates in unsoaked beans can bind iron and zinc. Greens cooked without any fat give the body less of their vitamin A. Small changes in preparation and timing, which cost nothing, can help the body keep more of what is on the same plate.

Knowing what is healthy and knowing what to change tonight are different things. Not “eat less salt.” Not “eat more vegetables.” The question is: what do I cook tonight that my family will eat, and that is a little better than what I usually make?

Every meal you log is broken down into 39 nutrients: all 13 vitamins, 12 minerals (iron, zinc, calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium, selenium, copper, manganese, chromium, iodine, phosphorus), fats including omega-3 and cholesterol, protein, carbohydrates, fiber, and sugar.

Then Timiya adjusts its estimates for what else was on the plate, how the food was cooked, and when you ate it. Chai with your githeri may mean your body takes in less of the iron. Sukuma wiki cooked without oil gives you less vitamin A. Souring uji can help with zinc and iron. A squeeze of lemon on lentils can help with iron. The result is two numbers for every nutrient: what was on the plate, and an estimate of what your body takes in. The gap between them is what Timiya exists to show you, and to help you close.

Most nutrition apps count calories. Some count macros. Timiya's food interaction engine accounts for preparation method, food combinations, and timing, grounded in research from the WHO, FAO, and the nutrition science literature.

A single meal score is useful. Weeks and months of logging show you more, because they are built from your own meals and the way you prepare them.

This data powers several categories of weekly intelligence. Each week, Timiya shows what improved and what slipped, comparing your nutrient absorption against the previous week with clear before-and-after visualizations. It highlights where to focus: nutrients still below your recommended daily intake, ranked by how far short you are. It tracks your food frequency, revealing which foods you rely on most and how your diet is changing. And it builds streaks, because consistency matters more than perfection.

Per-nutrient detail pages let you dive into any of the 39 nutrients: your trend over 7 days, 28 days, 3 months or a year, the foods you eat that are richest in it, how much you ate versus how much your body is estimated to take in, and which factors made the difference. Over months, a yearly heatmap emerges, showing your consistency at a glance: which weeks you tracked, which weeks you didn't, and how your scores evolved.

Timiya knows that omena eaten whole, bones and all, is a good source of calcium. That githeri pairs maize and beans, which make better protein together than either alone. That finger millet ugali carries far more calcium than maize ugali. That a Royco cube adds a lot of salt. That traditional dishes such as mukimo bring greens, beans and starch together on one plate.

It knows Kenyan dishes by name, and how you cooked them matters: boiled sukuma wiki is counted differently from stir-fried. Traditional preparations such as fermented uji and mukimo are recognized for what they do, not dismissed as old-fashioned.

Timiya is a word from Chidigo, the language of the Digo people of coastal Kenya and northeastern Tanzania. It means “to be complete, to be fulfilled.” The product answers one question every day: is your nutrition complete? Not perfect, but complete. Are you getting what your body needs, in amounts it can actually absorb?

Choosing a Digo word is deliberate. This product's identity comes from a specific place, not from a generic pan-African or global lexicon. The Digo are part of the Mijikenda, the nine Bantu peoples of the Kenyan coast. The word is authentically Kenyan without being from one of the dominant national languages.

It starts with a meal score and your day's nutritional completeness. Within a week, the weekly report shows what improved, what slipped, and where to focus. Month by month, Timiya shows which nutrients are improving or declining, and patterns such as more of your iron counting in meals without tea. As you log over months, Timiya is designed to build a fuller picture of how you eat: an eaten and absorbed history for 39 nutrients, across hundreds of meals.