DietRadar – Indie app of the day

What is DietRader?

DietRadar is an application that helps you quickly read the ingredients list on products to see if they coincide with whatever diet you follow. It uses your camera, AR, and OCR technology to scan labels and read out the ingredients for you. It’s currently free in the Google Play Store.

Here’s how the app works. When you launch it, it’ll launch your camera. You point the camera at the ingredients list of a food product. The app will then read out all the ingredients that it can and try to determine if its right for your diet. There are seven diets built into the app (likely with more to come) that include vegetarian, vegan, gluten free, and others. You can also modify each diet type to include or remove any additional ingredients you can or can’t have.

The app is a little flaky but it works most of the time. It can find and identify the main stuff (like dairy products, various oils) but it may stumble over larger or unfamiliar words. We’ve no doubt this will be improved as the app gets updated and the technology gets better. For now, though, if you’re not sure about something you should give it a look over yourself to see. This is an excellent for taking with you to the grocery store and similar places to quickly read ingredients lists and get rid of stuff that you don’t need or can’t have.

It's decent when it works.

PROS

• Quickly analyses long ingredients list to find items you may not want or can't have.


• Totally free with no in app purchases.


• 7 diets are included, all of which you can modify to add and remove items to suit your needs.


• Easy to use and there's a help section in the app.


• Available offline.

CONS

• It can be flaky from time to time. Every now and then you'll have to give the ingredients list a read over yourself.


• Obviously, it can't be used on labels that are faded (not its fault).


• Expert dieters already know what foods they can and can't have so this is more for beginners and forgetful people (like me).

7.5

Overall, it’s free and that makes what issues the app has much easier to deal with. When it does work, it works really well and can catch things you missed when you read the label yourself. DietRadar is also one of the most interesting uses for OCR and AR that we’ve seen. It does have some work that needs done but it is still a capable app and it’s worth a try.

Check out the last indie app of the day: Godville

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