APP REVIEW: Use The Eatery to snap photos of your food

There are all kinds of TV shows that see an unhealthy and overweight person being transformed into a much healthier and fitter version of themselves a few months down the line. Interestingly, many of these shows begin with the subject being shown the food they consume in a week as a way to visualise just how much unhealthy junk they’ve been putting into their bodies. According to studies, it’s true that one of the main reasons people tend to put on weight is because they’re not really aware of what they’re eating and snacking on throughout the day because they’re either too rushed or tired, so seeing it should (in theory) make them realise what they’re doing and be the first step in making a positive change.

Well, an application called The Eatery attempts to give you more control over what you eat by forcing you to take a photo of your meals and store them on your mobile so you can look back over your eating habits over time. As well as visualising your food, The Eatery claims that the act of simply recording what you eat makes you more aware of what you’re doing when it comes to your health too, so being able to take a photo just cements it in your mind even more.

The great thing about The Eatery is it’s a long-term food monitoring solution, so you can compare what you ate this week to the last as a way of working out what made you lose or gain that extra few pounds. This will also flag up habits that you didn’t realise you had, maybe you snack around mid-afternoon on chocolate when you should really be filling up on fruit.

As you’d expect there’s a huge social sharing element to The Eatery too, you can invite friends to join, hook the app up to your Facebook account, have others comment and rate your meals or recommend food to other app users at certain venues. Although inviting friends into your personal eating habits may seem a bit daunting at first, it could be just what you need to keep you on the straight and narrow!

Who’s The Eatery for?

The Eatery is for those who are serious about tracking and improving the way they eat, as you need a bit of motivation to get your phone out every time you eat something! However, after trialling the app for a few days we were impressed with how easy it is to use, so don’t be too put off by the thought of getting your phone out a lot throughout the day, the act of doing it may even make you realise you don’t need that fourth cupcake!

For app newbies The Eatery is really easy to get started with, simply answer a few questions about your eating habits and get snapping. You’ll then start to see customised progress charts and stats throughout the week that are really easy to follow (and lovely and colourful too!).

As with a lot of monitoring apps we’ve come across here on Connected Health recently (from those designed to monitor workouts to others concerned with monitoring alcohol intake) a big part of their success and benefit to you comes down to remembering to actually use them! But, we imagine it won’t take too long for you to get into the habit of snapping everything before you eat it.