Balance iPhone Apps

Absolute Fitness

$14.99

A similar kind of app to the BALANCE app, with the exception that all exercise is hand-entered rather than sensed. Features include custom food entry, categories of food items, search for food items, and a favorites list. Entries on specific foods shows a customized display of the percent of daily values as well as easy icons for adding the food to the favorites list, custom portion size, time of consumption, and a short nutritional evaluation of the food.

The Good: The types of exercise included seem comprehensive (shuffleboard, anyone?). Changing food portion size is handled fairly intuitively using drop down menus.

The Bad: Food database seems fairly limited, both in terms of general food items and in terms of brand items. There is also no section for recent entries.

This is the home screen which summarizes the food and exercise for the day.

This is the main food category screen.

This is one level down in the food navigation by category.

This is selecting a food via search.

This is the nutritional screen for a selected food with a scrolling label at the top of the screen. The icons are for setting the consumption time, editing the portion size, viewing the nutritional evaluation, and adding the food to the favorites list.

This is the custom portion size screen.

This is the nutritional evaluation screen.

This is the favorites screen.

These are the stats for the day.

This screen shows a graph of certain values over time. Example values are calorie count, total carbs, fat, etc.

iScale

$4.99

Restaurant Nutrition

FREE

Can sync the application data with ThePHRNetwork.com (was unable to make an account there). The main menu lists restaurants, and drilling down reveals food categories and food items.

The Good: There are two forms of search: search for a specific food, and search by nutrition characteristics. Meaning that if you are stuck traveling and planning on getting a healthy meal at a fast food place in the area, you can look for the food item with certain nutritional characteristics.

The Bad: This app only contains restaurant information for fast food places, which almost makes it seem like it's promoting eating fast food.

The Ugly: The history only seems to store food items eaten and their nutritional summary; there doesn't seem to be any kind of summary information. Presumably this app's main purpose is to sync with the web site, which would provide more useful summaries and recommendations.