An App: Fooducate

I was feeling all happy about my lunch the other day. It was the Frontera brand Barbacoa Taco bowl I wrote yet another dorky post about earlier. Still, there are a couple people at work who "tsk, tsk" everytime someone walks by with something that wasn't fresh pulled from a garden that day or allowed to live free range on one of the world's ten nicest meadows.

I tolerate the judging because, as Clark Gable said: Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. Still, I aim towards eating decently and I'm opening to learning an occasional thing or two. Not things such as, "I should be using Agave "nectar" as a sugar substitute" (that literally happened) or "those M&M's are bad for you" (really? I had no idea, thank you and your wealth of information. I'm sure that'll stop me in the future from getting two-and-a-half to eight peanut M&Ms out of the quarter turn-style).

Digressing. I do occasionally pick up something useful from the health "nuts". This time it was an app called Fooducate. It's a free app that allows you to, at a minimum track calories in line with health (weight loss) goals. The thing I've been using it for though is the handy scanning tool where I can scan UPCs in the store or on my frozen entree and then brag about how healthy my meal is. It does this in the form of an academically traditional A to F grading scale. As you can see, my bowl was a B+.

How do you follow a Taco Bowl? That's rather weird.

Fooducate even has a place for me to write a scathing (or lovely) comment about the item. As with all things internet, delve into the comments carefully, else you might find yourself battling over why Twinkies deserve a "C-" rating or why you really shouldn't put Frank's Hot Sauce on all things, but you can buy it in bulk in case you want to try.

Seriously, you could sleep on this 1.5 gallon pillow of Hot Sauce.

 

In addition to my bowl's B+, all of the ingredients were actually pronounceable foods. I must admit, they did kind of murder the bowl with seasoning and it had a tiny bit of heat to it. That may not be saying much as being from Minnesota ketchup can be viewed as a "Medium heat" salsa. Here's some bulk ketchup to go with your Frank's.


So if you're wandering the aisles at the local grocer or shopping Amazon Pantry and looking for things that constitute eating healthy give the Fooducate app a try. At a minimum it will give you a good grade for eating well.