Do you eat healthy? Do you know what goes into your food? Sometimes I’d rather not know. Take for instance the recent egg scandal around a large producer for McDonald’s. Or this article about everyday food such as potatoes and popcorn that pose hidden dangers.
In this month’s installment of the Mobile Gourmet Review, I have been playing with an app called Fooducate. The purpose of this app is to educate consumers on more than 200,000 packaged food products that we eat everyday. It’s like having a dietician in the palm of your hands. Fooducate provides a letter grade for a food based on the analysis of the food’s known ingredients list and nutritional values.
There’s also a tab that presents alternatives to your scanned product that you can click on. I scanned some M&M’s and one of the better options shown was an apple. Hmm – not exactly what I was looking for. Fooducate says that they are not sponsored or influenced by any food manufacturer, but based on some of the alternatives I was presented with, I’m not entirely convinced.
There are other app options such as a blog and a running tally of items you have scanned with their average grades, along with a comparison to others that have liked the same products as you. Fooducate is collecting great user information. I would like to see them apply it more to show what people are scanning most by category or by geography. Maybe they have this info and are selling it back to the manufacturers – that would be really interesting! They don’t have ads so you have to wonder how they sustain themselves.
Overall the Fooducate app is quite interesting and educational. And even if you don’t care what you eat, it’s a fun app to pass the time or entertain little ones at the grocery store.
Mobile Gourmet gives Fooducate: 5 out of 5 stars
Tags: Jason Wong, Mobile Apps, Mobile Gourmet
