Laravel: Function return “Object” instead of “Array”

I’m building a diet plan with Laravel 8.

Database looks like this:

I’d like to get the day’s meals according to average daily calories.

For example, if my daily calories is 1500kcal, I want to get 4 recipes (breakfast/lunch/dinner/snacks) for the day whose total calories are between 1300-1500 calories.

I use the same category for lunch and dinner but I need 2 results from this category.

I built some functions to do this:

use AppModelsRecipe;

// Function to generate combinations of recipes
function generateCombinations($items, $n, $start = 0, $result = [], &$results = []) {
    if ($n === 0) {
        $results[] = $result;
        return;
    }

    for ($i = $start; $i < count($items); $i++) {
        $result[] = $items[$i];
        generateCombinations($items, $n - 1, $i + 1, $result, $results);
        array_pop($result);
    }
}

// Function to filter combinations by total calories
function filterCombinationsByCalories($combinations, $dailyCaloriesMin, $dailyCalories) {
    return array_filter($combinations, function($combination) use ($dailyCaloriesMin, $dailyCalories) {
        $totalCalories = array_sum(array_column($combination, 'calories'));
        return $totalCalories >= $dailyCaloriesMin && $totalCalories <= $dailyCalories;
    });
}

// Function to get daily meal plan
function getDailyMealPlan($dailyCalories, $dailyCaloriesMin) {
    $mealCategories = ['breakfast', 'lunch-dinner', 'snacks'];
    $mealPlan = [];

    foreach ($mealCategories as $category) {
        $recipes = Recipe::where('meal', $category)->get()->toArray();

        // Generate combinations of recipes for this meal category
        $combinations = [];
        if ($category == 'lunch-dinner') {
            generateCombinations($recipes, 2, 0, [], $combinations);
        } else {
            generateCombinations($recipes, 1, 0, [], $combinations);
        }

        // Filter combinations by total calories
        $filteredCombinations = filterCombinationsByCalories($combinations, $dailyCaloriesMin, $dailyCalories);

        // If there are no valid combinations, choose a single recipe with the highest calories
        if (empty($filteredCombinations)) {
            $selectedRecipe = Recipe::where('meal', $category)->orderBy('calories', 'desc')->first();
            $mealPlan[$category] = $selectedRecipe;
        } else {
            // Randomly select a combination from the filtered combinations
            $selectedCombination = $filteredCombinations[array_rand($filteredCombinations)];
            $mealPlan[$category] = $selectedCombination;
        }
    }

    return $mealPlan;
}

But when I do:

$mealPlan = getDailyMealPlan($dailyCalories, $dailyCaloriesMin);
dd($mealPlan);

I get an Object for breakfast, an Object for snacks and one Array with 2 results for lunch-dinner

See here:

array:3 [▼
  "breakfast" => AppModelsRecipe {#1388 ▶}
  "lunch-dinner" => array:2 [▶]
  "snacks" => AppModelsRecipe {#1736 ▶}
]

I don’t understand why I don’t get 3 Array. I would like to obtain this result:

array:3 [▼
  "breakfast" => array:1 [▶]
  "lunch-dinner" => array:2 [▶]
  "snacks" => array:1 [▶]
]

Any solution?