It's the week of Thanksgiving here in the U.S. -- a holiday that typically includes over-indulging on turkey, root vegetables and pie followed by a short food induced coma. 'Tis the season, but for those who would like to keep track of their calories this week, there are plenty of smartphone applications to help you do so. Here's a quick run-down of apps available for various smartphones -- some are for the iPhone, others for BlackBerry devices and some are for Google Android devices.
In the coming years these calorie tracking applications will become far more user friendly by being coupled with wireless peel-and-stick sensors that automatically count a person's calorie intake. Companies like Philometron are working on those sensors right now -- until then we have to manually enter or look up our food's calories, which makes tracking a chore. In no particular order, here are some of the apps that make the best use of today's technology (let us know if we missed any!):
GoMeals by Sanofi-aventis U.S.
GoMeals is an iPhone app designed to help people living with diabetes make healthy food choices, but can be used by anyone who is interested in tracking the nutritional content of their meals. The app includes access to CalorieKing's nutritional database, which is considered to be one of the best around.
The GoMeals "Today’s Plate" feature helps monitor each day’s calorie intake, as well as the distribution of carbohydrates, fats and proteins. These three nutrient categories are also represented in a pie chart on the touch screen. Foods are selected from the CalorieKing nutritional database, which contains more than 25,000 common food items and more than 200 restaurant menus. A restaurant locator feature helps users locate restaurants based on their current location and the type of cuisine they prefer. And if the user is not at a restaurant but simply preparing a meal at home, GoMeals makes it easy to add individual ingredients to the plate so users can keep track of the nutritional content of any meal.
Calorie Counter by FatSecret
The most popular calorie counting application available for BlackBerry devices as well as for Google Android devices is the Calorie Counter by FatSecret, according to the BlackBerry App World site. Calorie Counter is a free application -- the next most popular health app is LiveStrong's Calorie Tracker, which costs $2.99.
Calorie Counter bills itself as the essential app to simply find nutritional info for the food you eat and to keep track of your meals, exercise and weight.
The Calorie Counter application includes:
A food quick pick to find calorie and full nutrition information; A food diary to plan and keep track of what you’re eating; An activity diary to record all the calories you burn; A weight chart; A journal to record your progress.
Calorie Tracker by LiveStrong
This is the second most popular health application in both BlackBerry's App World store and Apple iPhone's AppStore : The LIVESTRONG.COM Calorie Tracker can help you find that information and keep a digital diary of your daily calories.
The LIVESTRONG.COM Calorie Tracker offers:
Largest database of food and restaurant items; Customized daily calorie intake based on your goals; Weight tracking on your Blackberry and online, with a bi-directional synch from web to phone; A diary of your caloric, fat, cholesterol, sodium, carbohydrate, sugar, fiber and protein intake; Meals support; and more.
The application lets you look up or track your daily caloric, fat, carbohydrate and protein intake with the click of a button from a comprehensive database of over 525,000 food and restaurant items. Most major competitors only have 7,000 items in their database.
Tap & Track - Calorie, Weight and Exercise Tracker
If you want to lose weight you can choose between four different Diet Plans.
This application will calculate your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) to find your Daily Calorie Needs based on your height, weight, gender and age. Calculation is also done using the famous Harris-Benedict Equation considering your job type.
Tap & Track is designed to be very easy and pleasant to use. It doesn’t require you to spend a lot of time finding food items. If you wish to have more detail control on what you eat, there is an easy way to enter or edit any food values, or create your custom food lists very precisely. There is also build-in USDA database containing over 7000 food items that can be searched and used within app. Any item from USDA database can be saved to common food list for easier access the same item later.
