The Five Best Healthy Eating Apps of 2015
Not everyone who logs their diet does so because they want to count calories or track their eating patterns. Sometimes, it’s just helpful to know exactly what you’re eating so you can make smarter decisions, avoid risky foods or feel less guilty about indulging.
If you’ve been following along, we’ve been writing about some of the best meal tracking apps available. So far, we’ve covered the 3 Great Food Journal Apps to Log Your Diet in 2015 and the Five Best Calorie Counter Apps of 2015. Be sure to check out those posts if they’re more appropriate for your nutrition goals.
In this post, we’ll cover Healthy Eating apps, which generally offer libraries of diet tips, nutritional information and other important details about your food. Here are some of our favorites:
Cost: Free
You’re walking down the aisle at the grocery store and you see a snack you want. Maybe it looks a little too good, and you’re trying to avoid eating something too sweet or loaded with junk. So, you open up Shop Well — available on iOS or Android — and scan the item’s barcode with the app. Shop Well will tell you how well this food matches up with your specific dietary needs, which you’ll have already entered when you first downloaded the app. It offers a pretty straightforward interface and it’s easy to use, so if you’re trying to lose weight, avoid specific food allergens or just eat healthier, Shop Well can help.
Cost: $4.99 on iOS, not available for Android
Foodle is helpful if you want to know more about what you eat. It offers comprehensive nutrition information on more than 8,500 basic foods, so if you ever wanted to know how much potassium you get from an apple, Foodle can tell you. We like that you can group together your favorite foods for easier accessibility, and that you can search by nutrient. If you know you need to get more Vitamin D in your diet, Foodle can tell you exactly which foods to eat. The downsides are that it’s not available for Android and, though the nutrition information itself is comprehensive, a lot of foods aren’t covered yet.
Cost: $0.99 on iOS and Android
Supplements Guide offers reference information on some of the most common vitamins, minerals and nutrients. If you want to know the benefits of Thiamin, find the best food sources for Vitamin D or get tips on what to take for better digestive health, Supplements Guide offers a simple, quick way to do it. It’s a no-frills app that’s easy to use and puts all your basic supplement information in one place. If nothing else, it’s a faster way to learn about supplements than searching on Google.
Cost: Free
Fooducate mixes together some of the best aspects of the above apps, while also adding on a few interesting features. It has a barcode scanner for easy input and grades your food choices on a scale from A to D, telling you if an item is high in trans-fat, loaded with high fructose corn syrup, or packed with additives, preservatives and artificial sweeteners. You can also add foods that aren’t already in the database, and even submit your own reviews. Added features make Fooducate a bit bulkier than other apps, and you can only access personalized dietary recommendations by paying for the premium option, but it’s still a very useful tool.
Cost: Free
Eating healthy at home is all well and good, but what if you like to dine out or simply don’t have time to cook? Healthy Out is a great companion for restaurant-goers. You type in your ZIP code, choose between sit-down and take-out, and select your nutrition goal: “low carb,” “heart healthy,” “high protein,” or even “vegan,” just to name a few. The app then provides a list of nearby restaurants, the number of menu items at each that meet your dietary needs, plus a view of each dish and its nutritional information. That way, it’s easy to know ahead of time if you’ve found a new favorite hot spot or if you’ll be stuck with the garden salad. The interface is clean and simple and the information fairly comprehensive — as long as your local restaurants actually provide their nutritional information.
Check out our other meal tracking app reviews to find the best food logging apps and the best calorie counter apps.
On July 22, we’re rolling out a breakthrough health and fitness nutrition system on IndieGogo. If you want to be an early adopter — and be entered for a chance to win an 18-karat yellow gold Apple Watch — visit our website and click “Win the Watch.”
