Rate Your Food
It’s very easy to get fooled into buying foods that are advertised as healthy, all natural, and otherwise good for you, only to find out that there are harmful preservatives or additives, way too much sodium, sugar or saturated fat, or other issues that can harm your health.
A client recently introduced me to the Yuka app, which rates the quality of your food by scanning the barcode and it’s actually really fun and informative.
Once I got it, I started scanning all of the food in my snack cupboard and my refrigerator.
It’s rewarding to get an “excellent” or “good” rating (along with a numeric value on a scale of 100 and additional information explaining the “why”) and it’s also very eye opening to get a “poor” or “bad” rating on a food you thought might be at least “fair”, like my macadamia nut dark chocolate bar from LIndt.
The app is super easy to use and is free. The only limitation is that you have to scan the barcode on your food to get a rating. If you want to type in a food to get information about it, you’d have to pay an annual fee of $15.
I’m looking forward to taking my app into the grocery store and scanning more of the foods that have become staples in our house. I’m curious to see the ratings on a few of the snack foods that I know aren’t great for me and I also just want to feel good about some of the healthy foods that I’m eating. We all need validation!
In a perfect world, most of our food would be organic and grown locally, so it wouldn’t have a barcode on it. If those two conditions exist, know that you’re eating really healthy food and give yourself an “excellent”.
Since most of us don’t live in a perfect world and do consume many foods with barcodes on them, have some fun learning a bit more about how healthy your choices actually are (or are not).
The beauty of scanning foods in the supermarket is that you can then make informed decisions before your purchase the foods that you may not have known were less healthy than you suspected.
The point is not to stop buying anything that’s unhealthy ever, but instead to educated yourself about what you are buying and make conscious decisions about what’s worth eating, even if it’s not great for you, and hopefully, shifting into buying healthier versions of the foods you’re already eating.
Have fun with it. It’s pretty interesting and educational.
Action Steps:
Download the app and see how healthy your current foods are.
Take the app into the grocery store and get some ratings on more of your favorite foods.
