More Americans are learning to read food labels as a way to reduce obesity and eat healthily. A number of them rely on mobile apps with scanning mechanisms, telling them how much calories, sodium, sugar, and protein each product has. Labels, however, don't tell you other critical details such as mercury or arsenic content. This new app does.
The Environmental Working Group is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization whose mission is to protect the environment and human health by empowering people to make the right choices. One of its projects is creating a massive food database called Food Scores: Rate My Plate with-depth analysis of every food product sold in groceries or supermarkets. These include mercury found in seafood, BPA levels in canned meats, food additives, fat substitutes, artificial sweeteners, and antibiotics used in meats.
So far, they have already studied no less than 1,500 brands and 80,000 food products. But to make sure that this information is available to you easily and conveniently, EWG has also developed its own app and it's available for free. You can now download it in iTunes Store. The Android app is in the works.
To use the app, the user needs to take a picture of the barcode of the product, and the app immediately scans it and retrieves on-demand information.
EWG rates products on a scale of 1 to 10. The lower the score is, the "cleaner" or healthier the product is. Often, these are those that are whole food, natural, and have very high levels of protein, omega-3 fatty acid, and fiber. They also contain the least number of artificial or processed ingredients. Based on their study, a typical food product contains around 14 ingredients.
Aside from numbers, the system also displays scores in colors with green for positive scores. Around 18% of products in their database are now labeled green. Most fall into the yellow to orange zones. Over 55% of food items contain added sugar, which may not be declared by manufacturers in food labels.