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Healthy eating, healthy mind: our favourite free nutrition apps

Eating healthily is not just good for your body, it’s good for your brain too!

When we all lead such busy lifestyles, it can sometimes feel all but impossible to be consistent with healthy eating habits. Luckily, there’s a huge variety of nutrition apps available that aim to make sticking to healthy eating and boosting your nutritional intake a whole lot easier. 

While these can help us to make more informed choices, traditional nutrition and fitness apps often emphasise the importance of tracking the intake and burning of calories. However, becoming too obsessed with numbers can lead you to lose sight of the overall nutritional value of your food and these types of apps have been linked to encouraging disordered eating. 

So instead, since we know just how important taking care of our mental health as well as our physical health is, we’ve complied a list of some of our favourite free nutrition apps that promote a more inclusive and mindful approach to nutrition and healthy eating. 

Ate Food Journal

Ate is a mindful food journaling app that, instead of calories, helps you to focus on how foods make you feel and creating non-weight related goals. It’s visual, so rather than wasting time inputting every last detail of what you’ve eaten, all you have to do is snap a quick photo of your food! Food journaling helps us to become more aware of our choices and encourages us to make better future decisions. The app also measures the length of time between meals and snacks, which is helpful if you’re trying to eat more regularly during the day. (Free on iOS and Android)

Rise Up + Recover

Rise Up is an app designed to help people monitor their eating disorder recovery and keep track of their goals. It’s also useful, however, for anyone just looking to develop a healthier relationship with food. By encouraging you to track how you feel around meal times, it promotes an understanding of how emotions impact eating behaviours. You can also export your meal log as a PDF for a simple way to see your progress. (Free on iOS and Android)

Eat Seasonal

Eat Seasonal is a super simple app that tells you what produce is in season each month based on your location. Seasonal food not only tastes better but being harvested at its peak also means it retains its full nutrient and vitamin content, making this a great app to have on hand when you’re doing the weekly shop. The app lists the nutritional information for each item and also provides links to some delicious recipes that make use of it. If you’re feeling inspired by all the fresh, seasonal produce then check out the Grow Your Own section to see how you can start growing your own fruit, vegetables and herbs at home! (Free on iOS and Android) 

Plant Nanny

We all know how important staying hydrated is but it can be so easy to forget to keep refilling that glass! According to the NHS EatWell guide, we should be drinking 6-8 glasses of water and other liquids per day. Plant Nanny, the ‘adorable water reminder’, makes meeting this daily goal far more enjoyable. Each glass you log waters your own little virtual plant so you can keep it happy and thriving and watch it grow! (Free on iOS and Android)

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