Jovan Ilić
Founder, security engineer from Podgorica
I'm Jovan Ilić, a security engineer from Podgorica, Montenegro. Ten years of experience with securing software and systems — that is my day job. I'm building Calorko on my own, as its only founder.
Why I'm building Calorko
The calorie counting apps out there don't know what cheese burek, sarma or ten cevapi in a lepinja flatbread are, and they don't speak our languages. So I started from our kitchen: the dishes we actually eat and the portions we actually serve. When you photograph a plate, the app should recognise what is on it and tell you roughly how many calories that is, without sugar-coating it.
Where the numbers come from
- For every dish I keep a table of values per 100 g: calories, protein, fat, carbohydrates and fibre.
- Each one has a standard portion, for example 1 cevap ≈ 30 g or a slice of burek ≈ 250 g, so the number makes sense on a plate.
- Sources are databases such as USDA FoodData Central and manufacturer labels. Where there is no reliable source, the value is an estimate and is labelled as one.
- Every value has a confidence level: high, medium or low. Every calorie page also shows when it was last updated.
All tables are on the calories page.
Rules I stick to
- Health claims only with a source: WHO, EFSA, NIH or papers on PubMed.
- No crash diets and no "lose 10 kg in a month" promises.
- Any plan below 1,200 kcal per day always comes with a note to talk to a doctor first.
- No invented reviews or numbers. If I don't know something, I say so.
How the blog posts are written
To be upfront: article drafts are prepared by an AI assistant, following topics and rules I set. I check every number in the text against the table, and I read and approve every post myself before it is published. If you spot a mistake, tell me and I'll fix it. The articles are on the blog.
Contact
Personal site: jovanilic.me. For questions, corrections and suggestions, write to podrska@calorko.app.