You probably already use your iPhone to get directions, play music, or look up movie times, but did you know you could use it to find safe, healthy, and green products?
iPhone applications have quite a bit to offer on the food front. If you’re in St. Louis and you must know where the closest Filipino restaurant is, iWant, Urban Spoon, or Yelp applications can help you in a jiffy. You can also use iPhone apps to find an open table at a nearby restaurant, track calories and ingredients, or calculate your tip.
As more stories emerge about the complexities and risks of the globalizing and highly-processed food supply, more consumers are looking for ways to get information about the food on their plates. In the iPhone app marketplace there are a couple of promising apps to meet this growing demand.
A Guide to Food Safety iPhone Applications: Today’s Featured App: GoodGuide
Here are Food Safety News’ must-see food safety apps: Breadcrumbs, HarvestMark, Food Watch New York, Locavore, Still Tasty, and Good Guide. We’ll be featuring each one over the coming days.
GoodGuide
The benefits of the GoodGuide app extend well beyond food safety. The app links recall information (along with its designated news and recalls section), and will alert you to harmful chemicals or ingredients in over 5,000 food products.
The app also puts reliable information about the health, environmental, and social impacts of over 70,000 food, toys, personal care, and household products at your fingertips.
How does it work? Using the iPhone’s camera, the GoodGuide app allows you to “scan” barcodes and get product information instantly. The program gives an overall rating, as well as individual ratings on health, environment, and society.
In its health impact rating category for food products, GoodGuide considers overall nutrition, certifications and whether or not the item contains “ingredients not allowed in food” or “artificial colors of concern.”
“GoodGuide’s goal is to help people shop smarter and motivate companies to offer even better products,” according to the company’s site.
GoodGuide hopes to increase transparency at the retail level and “ultimately shift the balance of information and power” in the marketplace–amen to that!
Photo courtesy of GoodGuide.com.