New food app puts the microscope on ingredients in foods
Media Release: July 21, 2014
New food app puts the microscope on ingredients in Kiwis favourite foods
Kiwis have an easy new way to make the right food choices to meet their needs with the launch of New Zealand’s latest food app, Foodeye.
Foodeye is a free mobile phone app developed by Images in Space that allows people to access accurate, complete and up to date information about food products that are commonly available in most supermarkets, and then compare those products to similar ones in their category.
Foodeye encourages people to take a closer look at their food and aims to help New Zealanders make better and more informed food choices. It is ideal for people who are wanting to lose or gain weight, or who have specific allergies, intolerances or dietary requirements.
Managing Director of Images in Space Barry Pyle says, “There has been a growing demand from consumers to have more facts on hand about what is really in our food, so it seemed obvious to create an app which could provide this information, in a user friendly comparative format."
Foodeye is a great tool to help people prevent those extra kilos from inadvertently being gained in the colder months. “With Foodeye you can select a food item such as crackers, yoghurt or snack bars and compare the energy, fats, sugars and salt and other nutrients so you can make the best choice for you. It’s actually astonishing what the difference in kilojoules can be across any one food type so it is well worth being able to see the difference,” Pyle says.
For the many New Zealanders who eat a gluten-free or dairy-free diet, Foodeye also allows shoppers to quickly examine products to see which ones meet their needs. This can be done using the search function or by scanning the product. Similarly, those with allergies and intolerances can select the search function for their chosen food type and exclude ingredients from their search. For example they may search for muesli bars and exclude ‘peanuts’ as an ingredient and the app will return all muesli bars which do not have ‘peanuts’ listed in the ingredient list.
Leading nutritionist Claire Turnbull says that Foodeye is a wonderful tool for deciphering what is really in our food. “It can be very overwhelming when you’re shopping and trying to compare the ingredients lists and nutritional information on different products so it is great that you can use this app at home to make decisions about what to buy even before you get to the supermarket. Foodeye is a great tool to quickly and easily see what is really in a food and how it compares with different brands to allow people to make the best choice for them based on their needs and what they are looking for,” says Turnbull.
The Foodeye app is highly personalised and has a refined search function which allows users to search based on nutrient criteria for example, breakfast cereals with less than 10g of sugar per 100g. Users can also set up their own personal notification preferences depending on their dietary goals or requirements and be amongst the first to know of new products to the market, making Foodeye the ideal companion for weekly meal planning and food shopping.
Foodeye offers a number of different functions; users can search and compare nutritional information, ingredients and health claims of a product and can add products to an easy to read comparison list. They can then sort their comparison list by nutritional element (like fat, sugar, or sodium) from highest to lowest, and can view either the per serving or per 100g amounts.
From their iPhone’s, users can either use the powerful search tool to search by name, brand or category or scan the barcode. Options also include refining your search to find products that have for example, less than 10 per cent fat or less than 5g of sugar per serve or per 100g or products that are free of a key ingredient like wheat for example.
Food Eye is a free app for iPhones and will be available to download via the iTunes store from July 21st 2014.