4 Apps to Help You Protect Your Health

January 2, 2019

By Anna Varriano

Happy New Year!

Did you make any New Year’s resolutions for 2019? I usually don’t make New Year’s resolutions, but this year I said I would like to try something new every week; whether it’s a vegetable I’ve never had, a local road trip to some interesting ‘small town Ontario’, a farmer’s market I’ve never been to, an activity I’ve never tried, a blog I’ve never read … you get the idea!

When you look at polls on ‘Top 10 New Year’s Resolution’ lists, they are pretty much all the same, with most resolutions relating to health, and with #1 typically being “to diet or eat healthier”. Let’s forget about dieting and focus on simply making better choices when it comes to food.

In my experience, that is sometimes more easily said than done, and it’s because there is so much information out there that it takes forever to wade through it all. To make matters worse, much of it is contradictory or just plain wrong, so our decisions are sometimes a crap shoot. Interestingly, most people cite a lack of knowledge and time as major barriers to making healthy nutritional choices.

If you’ve been reading my blogs for awhile, I hope that I’ve helped you to sort out some fact from fiction when it comes to nutrition. This year, I’m making a bigger commitment to help even more people sort through the maze of nutrition and health information through my on-site corporate Lunch-and-Learn sessions. If that is something you’d like to bring to your workplace, you can learn more here.

Apps can also help to improve decision making when it comes to health and nutrition, and in this blog, I’d like to tell you about four apps that I use to help me make better choices when I’m shopping for food and personal care products. They’re all free, easy, and quick to use.

1 – Environmental Working Group’s (EWG) Healthy Living App

This app provides ratings for more than 120,000 food and personal care products. Why personal care products? Because our skin is excellent at absorbing whatever we put on it into our body, so we need to be more aware of not only what we put into our body, but what we put on it! Just open the app, scan the bar codes of the products you are comparing, review the ratings, and make the best choice. This short video demonstrates how the app works. Click here to learn more about EWG and its mission.

2 – The Non-GMO Shopping Guide App

This app created by The Non-GMO Project is specially designed to help shoppers avoid GMO (genetically modified) products. The app features a list of brands and products that are certified to be GMO-free, and it can also be used to find retailers in your area that stock non-GMO products. The Non-GMO Project is a mission-driven non-profit organization dedicated to building and protecting a non-GMO food supply through consumer education and outreach programs; marketing support provided to Non-GMO Project Verified brands; and training resources and merchandising materials provided to retailers.  The website for The Non-GMO Project includes a guide on common ingredients used in GMO food and tips on how to avoid GMO food. 

3 – The Seafood Watch App

The Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch® has created an app that helps you choose ocean-friendly seafood at your favorite restaurants and stores.  It uses your phone’s GPS to load the right regional guide for your location and even has a new feature called Project FishMap where you can find restaurants serving sustainable seafood in your area. The app includes a sushi guide, which lists fish names in Japanese and English and if you ever find seafood on the “avoid” list, the app will offer suggestions for sustainable alternatives.  This short video explains the importance of making not only healthy, but also sustainable decisions when it comes to fish/seafood.

4 – Savour Ottawa Buy Local Guide

While this is a website and not an app, Savour Ottawa’s goal is to develop and promote the Ottawa area as a premier, year-round culinary destination, with robust offerings of local foods and experiences for both locals and visitors to the area. Eating local and in season is often a great way to support our health, the environment, and the local economy! When you see the Savour Ottawa logo at farmers’ markets, butcheries, retail grocery stores and more, it indicates that each product or establishment carrying the logo has undergone a verification process to ensure that they are using local food in their products or are a local producer. The website provides an updated map of all the region’s local food and farms. It’s a great way to find organic farmer’s markets, food-to-table restaurants, and more!

Do you have a favourite app that helps you make healthy food choices? Tell me about it by emailing at info@perfectresonance.com and I’ll share it on  my Facebook page!

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