Carly Roop RD, CSO, is a registered dietitian at the Joan Karnell Cancer Center (JKCC). She provides nutrition education and support to patients while addressing nutrition-related side effects from chemotherapy and radiation. Dietitians at JKCC provide educational nutrition programs that are open to patients as well as the community.
Smartphone Apps for Nutrition
Fooducate is a smart phone app, developed by team of dietitians and concerned parents. It grades food items based on their nutritional content and ingredients.
Here’s how it works:
- Install the app. You can download it for free from the App Store for iPhone and Android.
- Scan the barcode or SKU of the item for which you want more information.
- Fooducate shows you the nutritional content of the food and grades the food based on its value.
- Fooducate can suggest healthier alternatives if your food’s grade does not score well.
I eagerly started scanning the SKU numbers of my favorite products. I felt like I was creating a wedding or baby registry in a department store!
To my dismay many of my favorite snack foods like crackers and cookies did not receive an “A.” And when I looked for alternatives with the app’s specially designed feature, it suggested an apple, which tastes nothing like my beloved animal crackers!
It took a few more tries before I finally realized that I don’t need an app to eat better. I realized that if I wanted an “A” diet, I needed to buy less food that comes with a SKU number and more food that comes in its “natural” packaging or none at all like oranges, spinach, fish, dried grains or legumes, for example. Despite learning this valuable lesson this free app is still a ton of fun to use!
If you want to see how your diet measures up and you have a smart phone or the Internet check out: Fooducate or www.fooducate.com/
Disclaimer: Penn Medicine does not endorse any particular application, and is not affiliated with Fooducate. This blog post is meant to be educational.
