I love discovering new ways to make eating healthy easier. When I went to use the Food Scores database on ewg.org to look up a marinara sauce this week, I noticed they now have an app that can be used on a mobile device or phone. The convenience of being able to look up the quality of an item prior to purchasing it is pretty cool. This doesn’t replace having the food tested at your next appointment but it will definitely improve the quality of products you choose to purchase.

If you’d like to get the app or check out the Food Scores database, go to ewg.org and on the front page you’ll see the Food Scores link. Click on that link and it will lead you to the page where you can either download the app or start entering food products into the database. Alternately, you can click the link on the left side of this newsletter.

One of the features I like most about these Food Scores is that they rate the food based on more than just the ingredients. They also factor in processing practices alongside nutritional and ingredient concerns. Once you plug in a product, you are able to find out in detail how and to what extent it’s processed. The closer to whole food the item is, the higher the score it gets in that area of the rating system. In evaluating the ingredients they factor in whether or not there are hidden concerns such as pesticides, antibiotics, food additives and other contaminants.

When I enter in a product I want a recommendation on, I always change the filtering to ‘Sorted by Score (1 to 10) from ‘Sorted by Best Match’. This assures me that I’m going to be seeing the highest rated product first since 1 is best and 10 is worst in the rating system. Please be sure to read the ingredients prior to purchasing your product because they still might contain foods that you’re not able to eat.