Orange containers and Blue Containers are both for primarily fat-based foods and they both factor out to about 100 calories. Their main difference is volume. With this in mind, the more calorically dense foods go in the smaller Orange container. Less dense food that takes up more space to reach 100 calories goes into the larger Blue container.
With nuts, we felt it important that they have a home in the Blue container because if they weren’t there, the Blue would consist almost entirely of cheese – a somewhat controversial food that many people choose to avoid. While we don’t object to cheese in moderation, it really isn’t really something that should be the centerpiece of an entire container.
It may seem confusing that the number of nuts suggested may not exactly fill the Blue container, but that’s because we needed to roughly hit that 100 calorie target. You’ll notice there are similar “non-fitting” foods across in all the containers.
So why are chopped nuts in Orange? For four reasons. First, they’re really good for you unless you have an allergy or intolerance, so we’re always happy to push them. Second, chopped nuts happen to actually fit nicely in the Orange container from a caloric perspective. Third, chopped nuts are common, especially in cooking. Finally, we didn’t want to force consumers to buy whole nuts, which can be more expensive.
You might also notice that the chopped nuts show up in some plans (Vegan Fix, Max 30) but not others (21 Day Fix, Portion Fix). This depends on the goals of the individual program. For example, because there’s some protein in nuts, we included them in both Blue and Orange containers for Vegan Fix, allowing users to get that little extra protein hit. This is important since protein levels are a common concern in animal product-free diets. On the other hand, we left them out of 21 Day Fix Eating Plan since users already get plenty of protein and simplicity is the main goal of this program.