Best For Shopping Lists: Mealime
Mealime
Why We Chose It: The apps easy-to-use grocery lists and access to a wide variety of online retailers make shopping for ingredients a breeze.
ProsBreakfast recipes only available on paid versionFree version has limited features
The recipes featured on Mealime are created by chefs and registered dieticians, and you can choose the menu type you want to follow, from classic and flexitarian to keto, vegan, and paleo options. Overall, the recipes are approachable and healthy, albeit a bit basic. You can search recipes by diet, cuisine type, price per serving, and even calories , and build meal plans to reduce food waste, save money on groceries, and use up whats in your pantry. One especially cool feature is the apps food waste savings tracker, which keeps tabs on how much food waste you prevent by using Mealimes recipes and meal planning.
What really sets this app apart for us is how easy and straightforward the grocery shopping features were. In the pro version, you can search recipes by calories. The apps Shop Online feature allows you to shop for ingredients from a wide variety of stores and delivery services, including Walmart, Instacart, Safeway, Albertsons, Kroger, Aldi, Publix, Amazon Fresh, and Sprouts.
What Is A Diet App
Diet apps are programs that can be used on an iPhone or Android-based smartphone, allowing you to track eating and activity habits to help your weight loss efforts. One of the most popular features of diet apps is the ability to record the food you eat and view the nutritional information.
Some apps have helpful features such as barcode scanners, workout trackers, meal planners, support forums, and the ability to enter and save your own recipes, with all the nutritional information provided. Diet apps may be synced with other health apps and devices, such as Fitbit, Apple Health, Garmin, and Google Fit.
Can Other Diets Also Be Whole Food Diets
Heres where it gets confusingyes, other diets can also be whole food diets. Eating a whole food diet is a lifestyle choice, but many other diets can exist within a whole foods construct. So, diets like the MIND Diet and Mediterranean Diet are also whole food diets.
For example, here are the foods involved in the MIND Diet:
- Green, leafy vegetables five times a week
- Five or more different colored fruits and vegetables every day.
- Berries five times a week
- Five or more servings of nuts a week
- Olive oil five times a week
- Whole grains five times a week
- Oily fish twice a week or take an algae-based omega-3 supplement
- Legumes and pulses five times a week
- White meat/mix of plant-based proteins twice a week
- No more than one glass of wine a day
- One or two coffee or tea a day max
- Two liters of water a day
Thats pretty much a whole food diet, right? As long as any meat or plant-based proteins are as unprocessed as possible, then it can be a whole food diet.
Other diets, like a vegan diet, for instance, could be whole food diets or not. It really depends if processed foods are included. Some food substitutes are really heavily processed, so its important to read labels really carefully. But its only some, not all.
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The 9 Best Recipe Apps To Channel Your Inner Chef
Last year, we all spent a lot of time on our cell phones searching for recipes. Our new normal has led us to get in touch with our inner chefs. We also learned that searching for recipes via the web on your mobile device can be a laborious task in and of itself. Nine times out of ten, when you find a recipe that looks good, youre directed to a food blog where you have to scroll through pages of the authors story about the dishs history, where they got the ingredients, what the food means to them, and other SEO filler. Not to mention the pop-up ads!
If you havent realized it by now, this is where recipe apps come in very handy. In some instances, youll have to endure ads , but in most cases, recipe apps are direct and to the point. They take you to the recipe, with a clear list of ingredients and how to prepare them. They have a photo with the finished product , and thats it. Some apps even have set-by-set video instructions that will walk you through the cooking process. Unlike food blogs, you can choose to click on additional content. Plus, depending on the app, they have tons of other useful features. There are even apps dedicated to your dietary restrictions .
In 2021 these apps are an example of how technology can work for you, not the other way around. Note that some of the features described below may not be available in the apps that charge for a premium subscription.
Easy To Cook Along With Video Directions:
Apart from all the community approach i kept following things in mind, users might be interested in:
- The no. of people they are cooking for and the difficulty level.
- Type of kitchenware used and the time required by the recipe.
- Food based restrictions and the ingredients used so if theyre missing any thy can directly add it to the pantry.
- Also when we talk about certain regions with low connectivity it made sense to not just add video directions but also written notes so that app remains accessible for all and they can easily take part in community and the app becomes a daily part of their routine.
I know some concepts still might need polishing but i feel this should be something viable that can reach doorsteps and even be easy to monetize in a similar way to social media channels.
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Gluten Free Restaurant Cards
Knowledge of celiac disease and gluten intolerance isnt always high among restaurant staff and street food cooks, no matter where you are in the world.
Even if they do understand it, theres often a lack of knowledge about things like cross-contamination and the ingredients used in sauces and thickeners. If you dont speak the local language, good luck explaining the intricacies and good luck not getting sick.
Thats where these Gluten Free Restaurant Cards come in. Researched and developed by food and travel writer Jodi Ettenberg, the cards are available for a dozen different countries and regions to help you eat out with confidence.
Using the local names for each ingredient or dish, the cards ask for recommendations on what is safe to eat and finish with an apology for the inconvenience. Each card has even gone through two different translators, to ensure theyre accurate and safe.
Available as a digital image that lives on your smartphone or tablet for easy access, you can also choose to print out the card at home if you prefer a physical copy.
Any smartphone, tablet, or laptop. Can also be printed out.
Top Apps For Finding Recipes For Ingredients You Already Have
Do you ever look through your pantry and fridge wondering what you could possibly make with what seems to be an impossible mystery basket off of Chopped? Well, theres an app for that several, in fact! As a culinary academy student, youre learning what flavors and textures work together. Here are seven apps that can help:
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Personalisation & Search Module:
Personalization is very important when we consider the user base associated with this application reason for that is people from all walks with certain goals, skills or dietary restrictions, allergies or medical conditions. Not only a product should provide users ways to solve their problem it is also important to keep in mind what are the important points which must be part of the interface so that it works with their needs.
The search module is built such that people can easily filter out what they need based on their preferences to personalise the recipes they see.
What Is A Whole Food Diet
In other words, it involves a lot of cooking because whole foods do not involve anything processed. That means no premade sauces, dips, or convenience foods like chocolate bars, sweets, or ready-meals. It also includes things like tinned vegetables and white bread.
Why? Processed and convenience foods are often high in salt, saturated fat, and additives in comparison to anything homemade. Because of this, their toll on your overall health is higher.
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New App Gives Freedom Back To Frustrated Foodies With Dietary Requirements
Finally!
New app gives freedom back to frustrated foodies with dietary requirements. Image: Eat well app
Eating out with a dietary requirement, whether involuntary or chosen, can be a minefield. Luckily, a new app gives you a run-down, and reviews, of restaurants that accommodate all kinds of dietary needs.
Around 25 percent of Australians have some sort of food intolerance, 12 percent are vegetarian, two percent are vegan, not to mention the tens of thousands of Aussies that observe Kosher or Halal .
If you have certain dietary requirements or have a friend or partner who does, youll know that finding places to eat with decent menu options can be an absolute headache for everyone involved.
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Restaurants that cater to vegans are still hard to find. Image: iStock
This was the inspiration for a new app founded by El Salem. Eat well, which is only available for Sydney cafes and restaurants currently , allows users to rate dining venues according to their suitability and quality for those with dietary needs, currently catering to 10 different kinds: Gluten-free, coeliac, vegan, dairy-free, vegetarian, plant-based, pescatarian, Halal, Kosher, and no pork.
The app also wants to encourage users to provide feedback if theyve missed something.
The app was born out of my own struggles to find suitable cafes and restaurant to eat at, considering my own food intolerances, explains Salem.
Recipes And Community Module:
Not only it is important to provide specific details like calorific value the no. of carbs and protein but other values which may include:
- The no. of people they are cooking for and the difficulty level.
- Type of kitchenware used and the time required by the recipe.
- Food based restrictions and the ingredients used so if theyre missing any thy can directly add it to the pantry.
Apart from this in the main recipe page i focused on introducing a concept to build a more community based approach for approaching most popular chefs on the application taking part in their recipes and posting not just in app in the community screens of recipes but also have an option of sharing it with the world on other social media channels.
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Are There Examples Of Free Food Apis
Most information from government resources like the USDA is free for developers. While it is a free food API, there can be restrictions on the number of requests allowed in an hour. The Campbells Kitchen API has free recipe information because it serves as a marketing platform for the company.
Browse these food-related APIs to access food databases , nutritional data, recipe/ingredient analyses, and many more.
Best For Meal Preppers: Mealpreppro
MealPrepPro
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Complying with suggested plan takes time
MealPrepPro is designed for people who want to cook large batches of healthy food so they just have to heat and eat later in the week. The recipes are quick to make and designed for you to make a big batch one day, and then youll eat it for several days after. Sure its repetitive, but if youre watching what you eat and dont have a lot of time, youll always have a healthy meal waiting for you. If youd rather cook fresh every day, or cook an even bigger batch to freeze, you can set the app to do that too.
Set up your preferences according to your diet and either let the app determine your macro goals based on your health stats or you can set them manually. The app will create a weekly plan of lunch and dinner from its collection of recipes. While the app focuses on lunch and dinner, you can easily add breakfast and snacks.
You can customize the plan if you want. Itll even offer suggestions if you want to swap out a dish with something else. The recipes are easy to follow with step-by-step videos, but theyre made for one or two people, so if youre feeding a family youll have to increase the serving size to scale up. You can also add your own recipes. The plan generates an organized shopping list, and you can cross things off as you pick them up.
The app syncs with Apple Health and the Apple Watch, so you can keep track of your calories/macros, water consumption and follow the shopping list from your wrist.
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Go Meal & Fitness Tracker
Developed by Dietitians, GO claims to be theeasiest meal and fitness tracker youll ever use.
Available exclusively in the App Store, the GO simply requires you to answer two quick questions before you get going.
Select a color and pick yoursize thats it.
Really?
Really.
This finely crafted app offers one-touch mealentry that creates a visual food log more powerful, understandable and usefulthan typical calorie trackers.
GO plots each entry on an easy-to-read timeline in daily, weekly or monthly formats. This zoomed out view helps you see the big picture with a single glance. And when it comes down to it, your day-to-day habits are what really make a difference in your health.
GO is extremely visual and lets be honest,many of us consider ourselves visual people.
The platforms visual timeline gives you aninstant snapshot of your personal strengths and weaknesses. Maybe you eat toomuch at night? Or too many snacks? Skipping breakfast too often? Not gettingenough workouts logged on a weekly basis?
One look at a weekly or monthly timeline, andyoull be empowered to make changes that pertain to YOU and the intricacies ofyour lifestyle.
GO makes it easy to capture the most importantdetails in seconds and is built on the science of practical, everyday life.
Main features include:
The app is certainly onto something so if youhave access to an Apple device, check it out for $1.99.
Eat This Much Meal Planner
If you are worried about your excess weight, then Eat This Much can help you in losing weight and setting your food preferences. This stunning application works incredibly well in planning your meals, tracking calorie intake, and in preparing a well-defined eating routine for you.
With it, you can quickly check your carbs intake during the entire day. Browse through its massive categories and find suitable eating options for yourself. If you wish to download it, use the below link
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Best For Gourmet Chefs: Yummly
Yummly
Why We Chose It: Not everyone is focused on time and health. For those looking for a greater culinary experience, Yummly offers accessible but aspirational recipes and knowledge with the ease of a planning tool.
What We Like
- Next-level inspiration for the intermediate to the advanced home cook
- Timing prompts let you know when to start, so you’re not running behind
- Plenty of value even with the free version
- Ingredient search tool makes it easy to make something delicious with what you have
- Tutorials advance kitchen skills
- The meal planning portion isn’t intuitive to find. It must be accessed through each recipe.
- Lots of in-app pressure to upgrade
- Many of the advertised recipes are only available in the Pro version
Not everyone is held to the 30-minute meal standard. For those who don’t mind stirring a simmering risotto for 45 minutes and want to be inspired by famous chefs, Yummly offers culinary inspiration and valuable organizational tools.
Yummly stands apart from the crowd in that it doesn’t shy away from more complex recipes. There are technique tutorials that will help level up your skills as well, and you can find your favorite recipes by searching by cuisine or ingredients.
Best For Using Up Leftovers: Bigoven
Big Oven
- Cost: Varies from free to $25/year
- Creates Grocery Lists: Yes
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Most features require paying the annual fee
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You have to pay to upload more than one paper recipe
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Limited features for organizing your recipes
BigOvens app is stocked with more than 1,000,000 recipes from home cooks, food bloggers and cooking sites all over the web, plus you can easily upload your own using the Recipe Clipper tool. You can easily add ingredients from each recipe to a grocery list with the click of a button, share the list and cross off what you buy.
But there are a couple of things that really make BigOven special: First, you can add clipped recipes and handwritten family favorites by simply taking a snapshot instead of having to type it in manually. The app will translate the photo into the apps recipe format in 2-5 days. You get one Recipe Scan for free, after that you have to pay. There are a few bundles to choose from but the minimum is 12 scans for $9.99. The paid versions of the app come with 25 scans.
The other cool feature is the Use Up Leftovers search button. Type in up to three ingredients and the search tool will find recipes that fit them.
The one drawback is that to use the meal planner function, you have to upgrade to Pro. But with the upgrade, you also get more ways to organize the recipes into folders, more refined search options, and the opportunity to add unlimited recipes.
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