Do you ever find it is difficult to find healthy food items for your family? An app that can help you with this problem is Fooducate!

First you will need to install the free app onto your smartphone, then you simply scan a food item that has a barcode on it and it will let you know if a food product is considered healthy or not. The app will do so by giving you a grade that ranges from A (good) to D (bad).  The algorithm is calculated by taking into consideration the product’s nutrients, ingredients, food category, processing, and fortification. For more information on the grading visit http://blog.fooducate.com/about-2/product-grading/.

If a product is not as healthy as you would like it to be, you can select to view alternatives for it as well. On top of that, if you are not able to find a product on Fooducate, you can also submit a picture of a product, ingredients, and a nutrition label so that it becomes available for everyone to view.

You can easily scan items just about anywhere, while shopping for groceries or in the comfort of your home. Allow your kids to scan items such as trail mix bars, cereals, etc., and show them how fun it can be to figure out which foods are healthy for them. The younger they begin to acknowledge which foods are not healthy for them, the easier it will be for them to be accustomed to those foods as they age.