Since food will be on the minds of many people as we go through the holiday season, I thought I would write a post about the Fooducate app which I have on my iPad. It’s optimized for the iPhone 5, but works on the iPad. The app is free, or you can download Fooducate Plus which does not include advertisements, for $3.99.  

You can either browse food or scan a product. You might use browsing for instance if you want to know about cereals before you go to the store to shop, searching Cold Cereals in three categories: top graded, popular, and recent.

I should warn you that it’s a bit addictive—you might find yourself scanning all the barcodes on the cans and packages in your kitchen cupboard but you will be finding out some interesting information. A picture of the canned item will pop up with the product details such as calories, fat, etc. Some of it will make you wonder if you should really eat the contents.

Details about the product in particular that is scanned are given, and sometimes some information about the food in general as well. I discovered that I have a can of very healthy black beans on the shelf, except that one serving contains 20% more than the daily suggested intake of salt for the entire day which is not so good, but at the same time it contains more than 24% the daily fiber suggested for the day. I was given the suggestion that I should consider buying dried beans instead. I scanned a can of O’Doul’s non-alcoholic beer and found that “BEER can be used to erase red wine spills like magic.” I never knew that! The procedure is given on just how to go about it. Dole’s Pineapple Chunks got good marks for no added sweeteners, and Libby’s Pure Pumpkin for being minimally processed.

Happy Thanksgiving to those celebrating the holiday today in the USA, and thanks to my PLN around the world for the thoughts and information you share all year.