Nutrition: ShopWell App

Nutrition: ShopWell App

The ShopWell iPhone App is free and helps optimize your grocery shopping. It has you enter generic targets for your dietary needs and tailors food suggestions based on that information. You can also specify certain allergies or foods to avoid (i.e. Gluten-Free, Shellfish allergy, etc). You can configure your account through the website (ShopWell.com) or the mobile application. I like the mobile app because you can scan a barcode and receive a "score" for a specific food item. It will even highlight what's good and bad about the scanned item. The app will also suggest alternatives for any poorly scored items. To test out the app, I devised a "Snack Bar Challenge" to try and figure out which brand is best for me. I currently eat Clif Mojo Bars because they lack any processed sugar, are 70% organic and also pretty tasty. I was surprised when I scanned the barcode of my morning Mojo bar and it came back as a "Weak Match". It scored only a 38 out of a possible 100. So apparently Im eating the wrong bar! I went to my local grocery store and bought a couple different bars within the same section to see which one will score better for me.

CRITERIA Below is a screenshot of my selected nutritional goals. The app has you select from a list of "Wants" and "Don't Wants":

CLIF MOJO BAR I started with my daily snack bar and was horrified to find it scored an abysmal 38% match for my nutritional goals (weak match). I believe this is due to the fact that the bar has added sugar (on my "Don't Want" criteria) and only one of my "Wanted" criteria (protein). Mojo Nutrition Info

LUNA BAR I see these bars all over the place but didn't know it was targeting women. Their slogan is "Created By Women for Women". Since I already bought it I figured I would run it through the app for fun. It actually performed better than my usual Mojo bar & scored a 48% match (medium match). Maybe I need to check my estrogen levels? (haha) Luna Nutrition Info

ODWALLA BAR I wound up with two of these bars in my cart so I scanned both. Despite being two different types of bars, they scored an identical 60% match (medium match). This is moving in the right direction however. The addition of more vitamins and calcium helps this score better than previous bars. Odwalla Protein Nutrition Info Odwalla Berries GoMega Nutrition Info

KIND BAR This brand of bar looks and tastes the closest to a few flavors of Mojo bars I usually eat. This particular one is Gluten Free and scored the highest among the bars tested here with a 74% match (strong match). This bar hits most all my nutrition criteria plus other unchecked criteria. This is why is scores so high. The only negative is the added sugar but every bar I tried so far had that drawback. Looks like I may need to start buying a different brand of bar! Kind Protein Nutrition Info

CONCLUSION The ShopWell app is easy to use and kind of fun. It was funny to discover that the snack bar I thought was the best for me actually wasn't. If you want to plan an entire shopping list, the website is the best place to set that up. The app is best used to quickly spot check items when you're on the go using the barcode reader. It's totally free and has a huge database of preloaded items that are regularly updated. The suggestions are always on point and I would recommend this app to anyone. So far the mobile version is only for the iPhone but the website is accessible to all. Check it out and audit your food purchases today. Cheers...