Welcome to a day and age when, whether you’re an amateur eater, a gourmand or someone in between, a satiated stomach is just a few clicks away. The choices are endless on both accounts of food and technology, but after much deliberation and careful thought, a list of the net’s six finest mobile apps for food lovers was born:
Meal Snap (iPhone)Sick of counting calories? Now you don’t have to. Designed for the mathematically averse, Meal Snap can supposedly crunch and track the numbers in your food for you — all you have to do is take a photo of what’s on your plate.
While the company claims they’ve got “magic” on their side, there’s probably a team of workers behind the curtain furiously Googling submissions and kicking out rough estimates. Sure, it’s not a precise science, but having some idea of what you’re eating vs. no idea at all is certainly the healthier way to go.
Foodspotting (iPhone; Android)
The old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words” seems to be the working idea behind Foodspotting, an application that invites foodies to trade in their wordy reviews for visually stimulating media.
The application allows a user to take a photo of their meal, add a caption, and pin the whole shebang to the restaurant it’s from. This process builds visually stimulating guides that can then be browsed by entering basic search queries such as “hamburger” or “pizza”.
Because the app focuses on tags and photos, even an overlooked restaurant (or one with a relatively low score on popular sites like Yelp) can be recognized if it has at least one outstanding dish.
Seafood Watch Guide (iPhone; Android support coming soon)
If a tiny voice in the back of your mind pipes up whenever you sit down to enjoy sushi or browse the seafood section at your local grocery store, then good. It means you’re wary of the ocean’s health and how it affects your own.
Thanks to the Monterey Bay Aquarium you can now validate or veto your concern before you dine. The Seafood Watch Guide app sorts seafood by contamination levels, provides regional guides for what’s best to eat in different areas of the country, and lets you share the locations of restaurants and markets where you’ve found sustainable chow.
With good intentions across the board, the app promotes healthy eating and awareness even for those without an iPhone — just point your computer browser to mobile.seafoodwatch.org.
Locavore (iPhone; iPad)
Eating local food is a major plus for both you and your community, but shopping the region’s freshest veggies, meats and cheeses at your neighborhood Farmers’ Market can be a bit overwhelming.
With that in mind, Locavore was designed to help users discover what’s in season or who’s had the best harvest. A few taps here and a few taps there, and you’ll be privy to what’s being grown and what is most likely to taste the best right now.
FoodTrucker (iPhone; iPad)
Long gone one are the days when hitting up a food truck meant buying dirt cheap, stick-to-your-rib eats anointed in Crisco. Come rain or shine, present-day foodies are spending their breaks in line for gourmet takeaway from nouveau lunch trucks.
In fact, there’s so much excitement around the growing assortment of meals on wheels that it can be easy to forget one very important detail: these babies move. The FoodTrucker app for iPhone helps you keep exact locations on lock by aggregating the carts’ whereabouts as they’re posted on Twitter and other social sources.
Flavorize (coming soon)
If you like food and Pandora.com, then you’re in luck! An upcoming web and mobile app called Flavorize promises to combine the best of both worlds by utilizing a Pandora-like recommendation engine for restaurant discovery.
Users simply type in a favorite dish, flavor, ingredient, or restaurant and Flavorize.com will generate suggestions based on the wisdom of the masses.
The application is currently in private beta, but if you’re totally enamored by the idea you should sign up for an early invitation.
Photo By: Jacob Bøtter
