If there’s one thing most of us could do to improve our health, it would be to eat healthier. Most of us know off the top of our heads that, say, a carrot is better for you than a Starbucks Venti Latte. But exactly how many more calories are in your coffee than the carrot?
FoodMeter Free is a simple app that helps you stay on top of the exact nutritional values of the foods you’re eating. From vegetables and fruits to brand name food products from supermarkets and chain restaurants, it contains both a quick summary of whether the food is good for you or not, along with a full nutritional value label so you’ll know exactly how many calories, sodium, and more the food has. This might be just what you need to help you keep on track with your health related New Year’s resolutions!
Find Info on Almost Any Food
FoodMeter Free is designed solely to help you find info about food. When you launch the app, you can immediately look up any food you want by name or barcode in the search box. Or, choose a quick pick entry to browse foods by brands, categories, restaurants, or supermarkets.
Note: FoodMeter Free can only lookup foods when online, so you’ll have to be connected to a WiFi or cellular internet connection to search and view nutritional info.
Find info on almost any food quickly … assuming you're online.
The Quick Pick options include an amazing amount of popular stores, restaurants, and brand name foods. Find the company or product name you want, then select from the different food items sold by that brand or store. Or, select the Food Categories section to browse fresh foods by category, and then find the exact vegetable, meat, and more that you’re looking for. We were able to find most things we looked up this way, and it’s an easy way to find out what the Big Mac you’re fixing to eat really looks like nutritionally.
Locate foods by type, brand, restaurant, or store
Alternatively, just enter what you’re looking for in the search box, and FoodMeter will bring up a list of the items it found. Often, you’ll have many variations of the same product or food listed, so just pick the one closest to what you’re looking for. One nice touch is that you can quickly see the amount of calories and fat right from the search page. If that’s all you’re looking for, you won’t even need to tap and see the whole listing.
Sometime it can be hard to find the exact food you're looking for
Once you’ve found what you’re looking for, tap on it to see its food score. You’ll see a quick rating number from -5 to 5, with a -5 the worst for you and a 5 the best. For more detailed info, tap the i to see the full Nutritional Facts about the item. This is the same as you’d see on packaging, but is very handy for restaurant food or fresh vegetables since you usually don’t have the full nutrition facts available about them.
While the meter isn't very informative, the Nutritional Facts are great to have handy!
If you’d rather not spend the time looking at the nutritional information facts directly, the food meter itself does give you a rough idea of how good something is or isn’t for you. You can also share the score on Facebook or Twitter if you’d like, though the descriptions of the score are often worded somewhat oddly. For me, the real nutritional facts are the best part, and I find myself checking it just for those.
The meter descriptions are somewhat odd, but are at least handy for quick info.
Only 5 a Day
Unfortunately, FoodMeter Free only lets you look up info on 5 items per day. Once you’ve hit your daily limit, you’ll be prompted to purchase the full app. You can at least still view the info about items in your history, though. For the most part, a 5 item limit would not be a problem on most days, and often you’d likely only look up 1 or 2 items. However, if you find yourself enjoying FoodMeter Free but want to look up more items per day, you can purchase the full version for $0.99. The full FoodMeter app also lets you scan barcodes to lookup nutritional information in stores without typing in anything, which could definitely be handy if you regularly lookup nutritional info on everything you try.
The free app only lets you lookup 5 foods a day
Conclusion
While FoodMeter Free isn’t the best designed app we’ve ever used, it definitely gets the job done. After all, you won’t be spending forever in this app, so the vast database of foods and nutritional information facts are the most important. We wish the app cached recently viewed nutritional facts so you could view them offline, and also wish it didn’t limit you to 5 food lookups per day. But, if you’re looking for a quick and free way to find info on anything you eat from Arby’s, Albertsons, a nearby apple tree, or almost anywhere else, FoodMeter Free’s a handy way to find the info you need.
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