Spoonful: Diet & Food Scanner

I haven't been shopping since I picked this up a few days ago- Where have you been‽ - because I'm immunocompromised. Also my (IBS) gut is absolutely miserable so I don't want to eat or drink more than particular granolas and drink green tea and I'm well stocked on them. Instead, I've been scanning what's around, including OTC meds, etc. Enlightening. (Nary a crash- the woman having crash issues might want to poke around at settings, get rid of location tracking, background refresh, automatic updates, etc when they're not needed and delete apps she's not using. She may want to check her battery use; what's running in the background?) I'm sure you all know it's not as easy as just buying gluten-free because pear juice is in some bread, mannitol is in Bean-o (Bean-zyme to the rescue!) My faves though- why can't I just plop something into it from general lists? Or can I? I don't see how. Please help.

I only wish I had found this back when I first became aware of the Fodmap diet. It has helped me tremendously with my IBS, but it was a long learning curve. On every trip to the supermarket, I had to scour every tiny print ingredients label, many times only to find out later that a product I thought was fine wasn’t because of a hidden ingredient (some ingredients are listed under certain generalized categories, like “flavorings”). With Spoonful, I just carry my phone around with the app open, scan the label of any food that’s new to me, and boom - I instantly get a green, yellow or red picture of the product (okay, maybe, no), with an easy to understand explanation if it’s a maybe, so that I can quickly determine if it’s a yes or no for me. This is sheer genius! There’s a lot more good stuff in the app as well, but I don’t want to create too long a review. Additionally, I’ve received some really informative and helpful emails from the company, which I keep as additional reference. Of course, you can always unsubscribe if you don’t like getting emailed, but I find these to be packed with useful info and resource links, so am very happy to get them. This is a dedicated and responsive company, as well. While almost everything I scan is in their database, if it isn’t, they invite you to email a picture of the label to them, so they can analyze and then add it. I did that yesterday, and was surprised to get an almost immediate response (human, not computer generated). Overall, this app, and this company, looks like a winner in every way imaginable.

I had been researching all the vast areas related to understanding FODMAP, what it was, what it wasn’t, how to understand the role it needs to play in my daily life, how to EVER be able to buy groceries without spending HOURS at the store trying to read all the ingredients on all the items I needed to buy, then have to put those, bad for me items down and find the energy- mentally and physically- to find replacements that were low FODMAP. Yea, I spent over 1 1/2 weeks researching my self into depression because I just haven’t that kind of energy. Then I came across the Spoonful site and learned about their app. Needless to say, I was absolutely excited that one single app does all that work for me! I just use the scanner in the app and scan the grocery store items I want and I find out then and there if I can eat it or not. There are alternatives listed in the app to tell you what to replace that item with. There are items that are not in the Spoonful database of products, which I am more than happy to take pictures of the packages list of ingredients, the front of the package, nutritional section and its barcode and submit it to Spoonful. Spoonful takes action immediately to add the new products and notify you immediately as to that foods rating, let you know it’s been added to the data base and available for every one who scans those foods. I am truly grateful to Spoonful and their app. You can’t go wrong with their help!