It seems like everyone’s allergic to something these days. If you have a hard time keeping track of your dietary restrictions while browsing supermarket isles, an app called ipiit wants to be your food ambassador. Scan the barcode on any product, and ipiit can identify foods that are good to go, or better to avoid based on your preset preferences.
Dietary restrictions can change many times over the course of a person’s life, from the discovery of new allergies to food rules set to increase health or lose weight. Although ipiit admits that many health experts warn against eating processed foods labeled with barcodes, they concede that for most people, eating all fresh foods all the time is an unrealistic goal.
After downloading ipiit for free from either the Android Market or the App Store, the first step is customizing your food preferences in the app. Whether you need to avoid a specific allergen or ingredient, or you’re just trying to stay away from certain types of food in order to regulate your diet, ipiit creates a food profile unique to each user. As you pass through the grocery aisles, any barcode you scan will return symbols in the app that determine whether you have the green light to purchase and consume that product or not.
Product comparisons in the app allow users to analyze overall nutrition in a food product, or narrow down to specific dietary priorities like sodium levels and trans fats. ipiit also makes suggestions for alternative products that suit your needs, if for example a different manufacturer makes a product that fits your diet better.
Users in the ipiit community can also see product reviews from other members and leave reviews of their own. It may be a lofty goal, but it seems like ipiit hopes that increased awareness about the foods we eat and the way they impact our bodies paired with customer feedback and reviews that food producers can access on the business side might just change our broken food system.
