Food Apps!

I love food and I love my iPhone, so I was excited to find out about 9 new and snazzy food related iOS apps that aim at making it easier to make better food choices.  Among those featured in the article on Fast Company, here are a few of my favorites:

Still Tasty

This app helps people figure out how long they can safely keep certain food items in their fridge before it’s officially “expired” as well as some useful types about each item. I personally encounter this issue often and tend to err on the safe side, so this app may allow people like me to keep some types of food longer than we’re used to, provided we can trust the source!  A feature I particularly liked is the option to set an alert when time is up for a particular item in the fridge.  Goodbye salmonella!

Locavore

Have you ever stared at a fruit or vegetable for a while wondering if the inside will taste as good as the outside looks? I’ve purchased bright red strawberries too many times only to find they are tasteless and white inside because they are not in season.  Locavore is an app where people can find out whether produce is in season or not, as well exactly where in the US it can be found in season.  Furthermore, the app advises consumers where near their home they can buy the produce once it does come in season.

Good Guide

This conscientious app rates assigns foods a score on a scale of 1 to 10, rating them based on nutritional value, environmental policies of the company that produces the food, as well as their social impact as compared to other similar producers. 

 Users just need to scan the food’s barcode to get its score.  An added feature I would like to see in addition to the score that would make the experience more robust is the food’s complete nutritional information as well as an abbreviated “cliff notes” version of the environmental and social impact data that the score is based on.  Both of these things would help to further educate users on what they eat.

While many successful apps like Angry Bird and Draw Something are simple and fun games for people to pass the time, many developers are taking the opportunity to use this platform to educate consumers. These apps are the perfect example of the increasing ease of the spread of information.  However, with hundreds of thousands of apps available in the iTunes store and developers with minimal to no marketing budgets, the most challenging and frustrating thing for apps is the difficulty of gaining exposure.  Perhaps we will soon see a more optimized mechanism to find valuable apps such as these in the app haystack.

Full Article: http://www.fastcoexist.com/1680246/9-apps-to-help-you-make-better-food-choices-for-yourself-and-the-planet#4