Fast Food Calorie Counter from Concrete Software (iTunes, US$2.99) is an application that allows you to select a restaurant from a database and then select the food items that you would like nutrition information for. It is quick, easy and convenient. Once you have selected the food items, it will track them for you so that you can watch your calorie intake and track it.
This makes watching what you eat that much easier for those of us who have a special place in our hearts for tasty morsels such as the Carl’s Jr. Western Bacon Cheeseburger. It’s also helpful to those of us who are trying to watch what we eat while not always having the time to prepare our own meals. After selecting the item you can then add it to a particular date for tracking purposes. You can then view the food you have eaten for up to a year.
According to the publisher, the application currently has 7581 menu items from 65 restaurants. While I have found that some of the items from the restaurants I frequent weren’t available in the application such occurrences were few and far between and the application has an exhaustive selection. Further the nutrition information in the application itself is not always consistent with what is published by the actual restaurant. I contacted the developer about this and I received an email within an hour letting me know that if I could point out the discrepancies to them that they would fix it. And a responsive developer is always a nice thing. In addition the app is updated on a fairly regular basis.
I would definitely recommend this application to anyone who indulges in fast food and is looking to monitor their caloric intake. I’m not going to divulge the numbers or results of my own experience with this application over the last week and a half but I can tell you that using this application is eye opening. And not in the way you might think. I think it’s common knowledge that fast food isn’t the best for you. Shucks, that’s part of the reason this app exists. The eye opening part for me was how quickly it adds up. So be warned. ;-)
