By Allison Mars, Dietetics Student, Sargent College

This week on Best of the Food Apps we review “Honest Label”

Honest Label allows you to scan bar codes on packaged food. The app then provides information on the amount of carbs, protein, and fat as well as breakdown of the ingredients, vitamins/minerals and basic nutrition facts of the product. How is this different from reading the nutrition facts panel? Honest Label allows you to set up a custom list of ingredients and nutrient levels to watch out for. If you scan a product that contains one of the ingredients on your list, it will present a big red “Warning!” at the top of the food’s information page. Instead of carefully reading the ingredient list, you can simply scan the bar code and see if you should toss it in the cart or put it back on the shelf. A couple areas of improvement for this app would be to expand the database so it contains more products and be able to totally customize the list of unwanted ingredients, which would be very helpful for people with food allergies. Despite these flaws, Honest Label is a helpful app if  you’re looking for an easy way to avoid specific substances, such as trans fat or MSG.

Honest label is available for Android

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