Healthy Eating APP

For the vast majority of ordinary people who want to adjust their eating habits, a formal healthy eating APP is useful, but it can only be an auxiliary tool. It does not need to be deified into a dietary edict that must be strictly followed, nor does it need to be an IQ tax that harvests health anxiety in one go.

A while ago, I helped my dad, who had just been diagnosed with mild hyperlipidemia, choose a suitable APP. I downloaded almost ten of them. I was able to save half of a lightning protection post because of the mistakes I made. I also just figured out where the boundaries between good and bad tools are.

Don't tell me, for novices who have no nutritional foundation at all, it is really the fastest way to get started with popular science. My colleague made up his mind to lose fat last year. He ordered pearl milk tea with fried chicken every afternoon. He memorized his diet for three days with the idea of giving it a try. When he saw the eye-catching red flag on the APP that said "Today's added sugar intake exceeds the recommended amount by 327%", he was immediately stunned - he had no idea about that before. The sugar in a 700ml cup of full-sugar pearl milk tea was more than the three-day added sugar intake recommended by the Ministry of Health for adults. He changed the milk tea to sugar-free pure tea that day and changed this habit. In three months, he lost almost 10 pounds. Even he himself did not expect the effect to be so obvious. There is also an uncle who suffers from type 2 diabetes. He can use an APP with a complete GI value database to check before eating. He no longer has to worry about whether staple foods such as sweet potatoes and pumpkins raise blood sugar. It is much more reliable than guessing on your own and listening to rumors in friends circles.

But there are quite a few people who criticize this type of APP. Last month, I saw a complaint from a mother. She cooked lean meat and vegetable porridge for her child who had just recovered from gastroenteritis, and added a small amount of salt to replenish electrolytes as directed by the doctor. The result was uploaded to a popular APP and scored 2.1 points (out of 10). The system comment was "sodium is excessive and the fat ratio is too high. It is not recommended to eat." The mother was so angry that she uninstalled it on the spot. This is actually a controversial point in the nutrition community: scholars who support quantified diet believe that ordinary people lack systematic nutrition knowledge, and the standardized data of the APP is the lowest-cost reference for dietary adjustment, which can help everyone quickly avoid the dietary pitfalls of high sugar and oil. ； However, those who support intuitive eating believe that over-reliance on the scores and calorie indicators of the APP can easily cause eating anxiety and even induce pathological eating disorders. When I was a volunteer in the nutrition department, I met a high school girl. In order to make up for the 1,100 kcal daily intake quota given by the APP, she was so hungry that she felt dizzy in class and did not dare to take another bite of an apple. In the end, she stopped menstruating for two months before going to the doctor. This kind of case is really not uncommon in the past two years.

In fact, I have been using this kind of APP on and off for almost 3 years. The biggest feeling is that it should not be used as an examiner for grading, but as a notepad for casual notes. I am now using a niche open source tool. There is no messy automatic scoring system. I update the database when I have time. When I remember my meals, I don’t worry about "I put 5g or 6g of oil in this stir-fried vegetable." Is the basic amount of 300g of green leafy vegetables enough per day? Have you not touched high-quality proteins such as eggs, fish and shrimp for several days? As for the daily calorie difference calculated by the APP, I basically only use it as a reference. After all, you never know how many tablespoons of oil the takeaway merchant put in when making braised chicken. It is normal for the standard value in the database to differ by two to three hundred calories from the actual intake. It is boring to be more realistic.

To put it bluntly, whether it is a healthy eating APP or various Internet celebrity recipes that are popular on the Internet, they are essentially tools to help you eat well. It’s easy to use, and it can help you slowly get rid of bad eating habits, so keep using it. If you worry about your scores every day and feel guilty for eating one more mouthful of rice, then there is no shame in uninstalling it directly - after all, the core of eating well is never about getting enough precise numbers, but that you feel comfortable eating and your body is also comfortable.