Sticking to healthy eating habits is an important part of maintaining a balanced lifestyle. After all, what we eat doesn’t just affect our body, it also affects our mood and overall well-being. But this is easier said than done. We all know the significance of keeping a well-balanced diet, but when we have so many things to do on our plate every day, following what we eat, or knowing whether we had too much sugar or not enough protein, can be tough.
This is where nutrition apps can be a great help. Today, you can find plenty of wonderful applications that allow you to track what you eat and also make it easier for you to stick to your nutrition goals. Having them installed on your smartphone will make tracking your nutrient levels simple and convenient and will be almost like having a friendly dietician in the palm of your hands.
Here, we have featured some of the best free food and nutrition apps out there today that you will surely find useful.
1. MyFitnessPal
MyFitnessPal is one of the most popular fitness-oriented food apps currently. It has plenty of features – a food diary where you can track your daily food consumption, a barcode scanner that makes logging food easy, and even a recipe importer, a calorie counter, and a restaurant logger. Furthermore, there are nutritionist-approved recipes and motivational workout tips from experts. The app also readjusts itself throughout the day and provides an updated calorie intake regularly.
The wonderful part about MyFitnessPal is that it lets you select your intentions before you begin using it – whether it is monitoring your nutrition, or if it’s more about weight gain, weight loss, or weight maintenance.
2. Rise Up
Our emotions impact our eating behaviors a lot more than we realize. Many of us reach for certain foods many times a week to subdue negative feelings or just as an addiction to something comforting. Unfortunately, emotional eating is an unhealthy habit and can lead to very unhealthy eating behaviors, like binge eating
Rise Up is an amazing app for those who are trying to build a better and healthier relationship with food. How? It lets you log your meals in the app and encourages you to note how you're feeling around a mealtime (the cute emojis will definitely help you better identify with your feelings). It also allows you to export PDF summaries of your progress and add notes to them so that you can recognize patterns over time and share them with your healthcare provider if needed.
3. Fooducate
The next time you are about to plan your grocery shopping list, make sure you have the Fooducate app with you. The app is like having a nutritionist taking you shopping. While it is designed as a diet tracking app, it has plenty of features that help simplify the task of eating healthy.
The great thing about Fooducate is that instead of writing down what you eat, you only have to scan food items to log them in the app’s diary. Once an item is recorded, the app provides a grade that shows how healthy the food item is. Moreover, it grades food products on a scale from A (best) to D (worst) based on their ingredients and nutritional value. For example, an apple is graded A for being a high-vitamin food item while fries are given a C grade because of their low calorie and protein content. This isn’t all - if an item has been given a low grade, the app even provides alternative food options. This can be particularly helpful when you are out grocery shopping as you will be able to translate nutrition labels of the different food products much more comfortably and choose the ones that are the healthiest.
The information provided in Fooducate is simple to understand and has helped educate people about food and nutrition.
4. Waterlogged
We’re all aware that staying hydrated is extremely important. But do you always remember to get your daily intake of water without fault? Chances are, many of us tend to forget the daily amount of water we need to drink as we are consumed with other work throughout the day.
Waterlogged can help you in this regard by reminding you to drink water throughout the day by means of friendly notifications. You can track your water consumption in the app by day, week, or year and view your progress any time of the day. There’s also the option to set daily water drinking goals and customize the app based on the size and type of the glass or water bottle you use. Cool graphs that visually monitor your water consumption only make your water tracking so much fun.
5. Yummly
An important part of leading a healthy lifestyle is cooking regular wholesome dishes at home. But this is easier said than done. Thinking about what to cook and, more importantly, how to cook, can be quite overwhelming. But help is always at hand, and the Yummly app is your perfect guide.
It is filled with tons of recipes that match your unique tastes and diet preferences. Further, the app lets you prepare a grocery list that offers recipe ideas based on the ingredients you select. Also, to make it easier to find the right food for you, Yummly has options for you to note down your food allergies, restrictions, tastes, and preferences, and sends recommendations based on them.
Share these wonderful apps with your loved ones!
