QRazy for food.
Imagine a world where you could effortlessly access all the nutritional information of your food with a simple scan or effortlessly track your diet by recording your meals and calculating the calories, fat, carbs, and protein you consume per meal.
Luckily for you, you don’t need to imagine, as with the latest technology, new apps are being developed where all of these things are now available right at the tip of your finger. QR code scanning and online diet trackers are taking the nutrition industry by storm; online nutrition and diet tracking apps have accumulated over 200 million downloads, with people aged between 25-44 making up 60% of the users. (Trishita Deb, 2025). Around 50 leading online nutrition apps are available to you, many of them being free, meaning that it has never been easier for you to start your diet.
But what makes them so popular?
Their popularity is rooted in their user-friendly nature. Take MyNetDiery, for instance. It’s the fifth most used online nutrition app in Ireland (Sensor Tower, 2024), it’s free, it allows you to set diet plans and weight loss goals and presents your nutritional information in easy-to-understand tables and graphs and it even grades each meal and snack you log to give you a clear picture of its nutritional value.
It even allows you to log food that might not necessarily have a QR code, such as food from fast food restaurants. It has the names and nutritional information from most fast-food restaurants in its database so that even without a QR code, you log exactly what you eat.
My net diary is one of the easiest online diet tracking apps available on the market, in a review by Dr Mark Morris (Dr Morris, 2024) they went on to say how efficiently the data was presented to the user, making it perfect for beginners to calorie counting apps, or experienced calorie counters who appreciate and/or prefer a more simplistic approach.
MyNetDairy is developing an AI camera scanner, where you can simply take a photo of your plate of food; it will analyse what’s there and estimate the total number of calories on your plate. (Ajmera, 2022)
Why should I use them?
You can use these apps to get a proper hold of your fitness aspirations as well as make sure that what you eat is best for you without any risk or payment.
They also allow you to make a choice; when you’re looking in the shop for what you want, you can simply scan the foods you are comparing and get a second opinion purely based on their nutritional information, making the healthier option more apparent.
They are also incredibly useful for people with allergies. If you have a peanut allergy, for instance, and you’re not sure if what you are buying has peanuts in it, you can scan the QR code, and it will tell you whether it may contain them.
Most of them are free to download and use, offering core services like QR code scanning and diet tracking. This means you can explore these apps without any financial risk. If you don’t find them useful, you can simply uninstall them without any sense of wasted investment.
Is there a downside to them?
Simply put, yes, like anything, there is a downside. The biggest issue with these apps is the danger they pose to people with eating disorders or people who are very self-conscious about their weight. In a study done by Cheri A Levinson (Levinson, 2018). She found that when 105 people with eating disorders used the app, 75% of them used a QR code and calorie-counting app, with 73% of them saying that the app contributed heavily to their eating disorders.
Calorie-counting apps can sometimes have a detrimental effect on their users, who may not understand how to stop using the app when they have achieved their goal. Eating disorders could arise from using these apps or they may worsen the symptoms for a person.
The apps also don’t seem to care about under-eating users. When you put the weight you want to achieve into the app, it will make you a plan on how to achieve it, such as how many calories you should consume a day, and what types of foods you should be eating. If you go over the designated calorie limit, the app will tell you to eat less; however, if you are eating fewer calories, or even dangerously low amounts, it may not give you any warning. Instead, it will just tell you that you will achieve your goal even quicker than expected.
What’s my takeaway?
I am personally a chicken korma with pilau rice kind of guy; my girlfriend, on the other hand, prefers a nice juicy burger, but no matter what sort of food you like, it’s now never been easier to log your food and keep track of your diet and weight loss goals.
The future of diets is here, and there has never been a better time to set a goal for yourself. You can be ambitious, or you can start easy and simple, there are no restrictions on what you can do to your diet. No matter what you do, these apps are always going to be here to help you, always changing, always being developed to make your diet more effective.
Track your way to a healthier you.
Why don’t you tell me what you think? Have you used one of these apps before? If you think I’ve missed something, please let me know by leaving a comment in the box below.
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Just remember, stay QRrazy for food.