Yup … there’s an app for that!
The Don’t Eat That app takes reading food labels to a new level. It gives you access to 1500+ food additives, ingredients and chemicals. The database is stored on your iPhone so no Wi-Fi or 3G access is necessary. Just download and go.
You can search for ingredients by categories such as: harmful to children, banned ingredients, problem ingredients, carcinogens and allergies. Plus, with the Don’t Eat That app you can look up food ingredients that are not listed on U.S. food labels, but that are in fact GMO. It even has detailed information on E numbers for food additives named in Europe.
I love the back story of the app. It was developed by Dwayne Ratleff, who on his 50th birthday, decided to get healthy. A primary part of that was becoming aware of what he was eating. As he wrote on the Don’t Eat That companion website: “I could not pronounce half the words on food labels and quickly realized that the ingredients on food labels tell us very little.” Thus, he spent nearly 1,000 hours compiling a database using information from the Food and Drug Administration, the European Food Safety Agency, Food Standards Australia New Zealand, the World Health Organization, and more. He doesn’t claim to be an “expert”. He researched the best sources available to put together a database with the best information available.
I don’t really eat processed food so I don’t have to read too many labels anymore, but I figured why not get the app. And while I’ve only just started playing with it, I definitely think at $1.99 it’s totally worth the price.