App Happy

If you are into apps, I have sampled a-many and found some to be great and really useful and others to be... boring.

Epi- This app is from Epicurious and I love love love it.  It has plenty of food and beverage recipes, and lets you search through their database by keyword, main ingredient, meal, dish type, cuisine, dietary consideration or season/occassion.  You can then save to your favorites within the app.  I have used this numerous times, especially in the grocery store if something unexpected is on sale and I have no recipes in my arsenal.  Like, halibut, for instance!

AllRecipes- The DinnerSpinner is similar to the Epi app, but is more fun to use because you flick the phone to make the wheels spin like a slot machine.  You can narrow by dish type, ingredients, and ready in/cooking method.  You can also search by keyword.  Not as extensive as Epi, but if you want a solid go-to recipe that might not be as gourmet, this is a great app.

SparkRecipes- Healthy recipes that are submitted by all sorts of folks.  You can search by keyword, or browse by category, course, cuisine, dietary consideration or occassion.  What's nice is that there are lots of variaions on recipes for one dish.  For instance, tuna salad will bring up lots of health-inspired recipes from all over.

UrbanSpoon- So fun for restaurant lovers!  It detects your area, and you select the cuisine type and price.  You can also change location, so it works whether you are spontaneously looking for a place where you are, or if you are planning ahead.

Restaurants- Nutritional information on practically every national chain restaurant I can think of.  You will never be stuck in a line guessing which dish has the most fat, calories or sodium.  After sifting through, I was really surprised about what I found to look like a good choice but wasn't, or seemed like a bad choice but wasn't really that bad. 

NutritionTips- Nothing fancy, but is loaded with fun little things you can do to improve overall health.

NutritioniQ- Select a category, like fiber, calcium, protein, or whole grains, and flip through foods, learning about their health benefits as you go.  Then you can add the items you like to a mobile grocery list.

Vitamins- Again, nothing fancy, but houses lots of information about what each vitamin or mineral does and where you can find it.  I guess this is good if you are curious...

DietFoods- Another unfancy app, but loaded with lots of healthy foods and their benefits.  For instance, find out what broccoli can do for you, then tap to read on about carrots.

NCalculator-  By entering your stats, you can calculate your BMI, BMR, Body Fat and about how many calories you burned.  It also lets you know how your number falls within different ranges of health.

There are a few others that I'm tinkering with.  I'll let you know if I find any good ones!