The best free apps to know what you eat

Paying attention to what you eat and looking at the labels of the products you buy to know their composition has become a reflex for a large number of consumers. But in the jungle of additives and other barbaric-named preservatives, it’s increasingly difficult to know what you’re really eating on a daily basis.

To try to find your way around and help you make better choices, it is possible to be assisted by applications which, by simply scanning the barcode of a product, are able to decipher for you their composition and display nutritional information. If you are completely free to choose what you eat, these free apps at least have the power to shatter some misconceptions and maybe open your eyes to products that are more harmful than you ever imagined.

Yuka

Yuka is a reference. First, because the application is based on an interface that is well above the competition. Modern and intuitive, Yuka offers to decipher the nutritional information usually indicated on the back of the packages of the foods you buy, by simply scanning the barcode of the product with the camera of your smartphone.
For each foodstuff analyzed, Yuka deciphers the nutritional data within a clear layout, displaying each element in a table grouping the qualities of the product. The information is readable and the terms used are simplified for a better understanding of the values.

For each item presented, the quantity is indicated with a score represented by a color code ranging from dark green when the product has good qualities to red when it is poor. Yuka also indicates the number of calories of the products tested as well as their impact on your body. Food assessment is based on three criteria: nutritional quality which accounts for 60% (and which takes into account the number of kcal, saturated fats, sugars, etc.), additives which account for 30% , the remaining 10% counting for products with the organic label.

Regarding the additives that can be used in the composition of your dishes, Yuka is responsible not only for indicating their name, but also and above all for explaining their role (preservative, coloring, texture agent, etc.). In case you have scanned a mediocre or bad product, the app suggests one or more alternative products with more satisfactory nutritional data. To offer so much information, Yuka relies on the free Open Food Facts database, but also on the book “Le Nouveau guide des additifs” published in 2017 by Thierry Souccar editions.

For the rest, the application’s information database is updated daily thanks to the users who can supplement certain data by sending them directly to Yuka. If all the scanned foods are kept in a history, you can, at the end of the month, take stock of the overall quality of the foods you have ingested using a pie chart showing the distribution of the products consumed according to their score .

The +:
+ Interface and handling
+ Completeness of information
+ Suggestions for substitute products

The – :
– Mandatory login via a Facebook account

Download Yuka for Android (Free)
Download Yuka for iPhone (Free)

Kwalito

Sporting a modern interface, which is reminiscent of Yuka’s, Kwalito stands out by offering to scan your food according to a particular diet. So, in addition to knowing if the foods you eat are healthy, you can configure Kwalito to identify foods compatible with a vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, pregnant woman, pork-free, lactose-free, peanut-free diet, etc.
The application also offers more possibilities than Yuka in terms of analysis since it is possible to exclude foods according to the level of health risk represented by the additives they incorporate.

To check if a product can be consumed with regard to your diet, Kwalito offers two solutions: by simply scanning the barcode of the food, or by manually typing the name of the product in the search engine provided for this purpose. For each food item analyzed, Kwalito displays the result in the form of a color code ranging from green, when the product is considered healthy, to red, when it does not meet the criteria defined by your diet. The tested products can be added to a list of favorites to find the results more quickly, and can also be rated by the user community, the application even offering to leave a 140 character review for a tested food.

Finally, Kwalito locally embeds its entire database, which allows it to be used without an Internet connection. Useful in stores with poor network coverage.

The +:
+ Possibility of setting a specific regime
+ Information on additives
+ Ability to search for a product manually

The – :
– Obligation to create an account
– No information on the nutritional qualities of foods
– Lots of unrecognized products

Download Kwalito for Android (Free)
Download Kwalito for iPhone (Free)

Open Food Facts

Open Food Facts is the official app of the collaborative food database project. The official benchmark for content – the data contained in Open Food Facts is the basis of most applications in the industry – it is based on open data that is constantly added, enriched and updated by thousands of users. The application thus lists a little more than 210,000 products.

If this substantial knowledge base is essential for the proper functioning of most applications of its kind, it fails by its austere or even outdated interface compared to what the competition can offer. To test your food, Open Food Facts offers to scan the barcode of the product or to launch a request manually in the dedicated search engine.

Product information sheets include general characteristics, ingredients, nutritional information and a photo. When available, the application displays the Nutri-score and indicates the nutritional benchmarks for 100g, all accompanied by a clear color code ranging from green, when the harmful element is present in small quantities, to red, when the quantity is too high.

Download Open Food Fact for Android (Free)
Download Open Food Fact for iPhone (Free)

The +:
+ No need to log in or create an account to use the app
+ Amount of information
+ Ability to search for a product manually from the search engine

The – :
– Outdated interface
– No search history
– No personalized statistics on the products you scan

Scan Eat

Also relying on the gigantic Open Food Facts database, Scan Eat analyzes your food and provides for each food tested a Nutriscore, a score combined with a color ranging from A (green) to E (red) depending on the nutritional qualities of the product.

To help you choose your foods well, Scan Eat offers two options. The first, classic, allows you to test the products and display the Nutriscore along with the description sheet by simply scanning the barcode. The second, more advanced, allows you to manually search for a product corresponding to a particular diet. To do this, go to the “Explore” section where it is possible to pre-filter the search results to display only foods with a certain Nutriscore, with a particular label (organic, produced in Brittany, guaranteed French origin. , Label Rouge, MSC Sustainable Fishing, etc.) or excluding certain allergens and additives.

Scan Eat History only logs foods for which you have scanned the barcode and can be emptied at any time. The application does not require any connection. The scan history is therefore only stored locally on your device. The products whose information you want to keep can be added to a list of favorites. In addition, thematic food lists can be created but do not make it possible to carry out a search according to a Nutriscore. Finally, Scan Eat offers a section dedicated to research trends (the most scanned products, drinks, chocolate, the team’s selection) but whose interest is, for the time being, quite difficult to grasp.

The +:
+ No registration required
+ Display of a Nutriscore

The – :
– Lack of relevance of some sections of the application
– Not enough results in manual searches

Download Scan Eat for Android (Free)
Download Scan Eat for iPhone (Free)

Is My Food Good

Like Scan Eat, Is My Food Good is based on the Open Food Facts database and offers for each product scanned, a Nutriscore ranging from A to E associated with a color code ranging from green to red.

Each product analyzed by the application has a descriptive sheet as well as a table grouping Nutriscore, nutritional guidelines, as well as the list of ingredients used in its composition. The color code used on the cards is clear and allows you to immediately understand whether the food analyzed is healthy or not. In addition, items that may represent a risk such as sugar or fat are displayed in red when their quantity per 100 grams is too high.

Is My Food Good also allows you to create lists of products, but also to add your favorites to your favorites to find them more easily. If the application does not require the user to create an account and to connect to it to use it, the connection is however essential if you want to keep a history of your searches. Finally, to keep an eye on the state of your consumption, Is My Food Good generates a graph summarizing the distribution of the products you consume according to their Nutriscore.

The +:
+ Connection not required (but required to keep a history)
+ Presence of a Nutriscore and nutritional benchmarks

The – :
– Too much missing data
– No explanation on additives

Download Is My Food Good for Android (Free)
Download Is My Food Good for iPhone (Free)

Verdict

To monitor your daily diet and help you choose the products you buy, Yuka is the simplest and most complete application. If the information it provides is not a word of the gospel, it does, however, make it possible to modify certain eating habits and to raise awareness of the quantity of additives present in the foodstuffs that we consume. We appreciate the use of simplified terms to categorize additives, and a fairly consistent product rating system, which does not prevent taking a look into the details to ensure that all the lights are green.

If you have to follow a stricter diet in which certain ingredients are outlawed, turn to Kwalito. The application alerts you as soon as you submit a product with an ingredient incompatible with your diet and even allows you to perform a search manually using the search engine it integrates.