iPhone App Decodes Food Labels

Let's face it: few people understand the stuff on a food label. It's not that you're stupid. It's that nobody could be expected to memorize every chemical additive used in processed foods. More importantly, the proliferation of more exotic (to Americans, anyway) foods has made it hard to gauge whether one of your guests might be allergic to that cool recipe you found on the Food Network.

Well, there's an app for that. The $1.99 iPhone app is, appropriately enough, called Don't Eat That. It's not flashy. But it has is a database that tells you whether a given ingredient might be an allergen or dangerous to some people. It won't smell your food for you, but it will provide a quick answer to "is this unhealthy."

Some dyes, for instance, can be a problem. It also has an educational section organized by the concern you might have, so you could look up foods you might not have never thought of and see whether they are a problem. For example, one can look up "kids and pregnancy" and see what kids of foods are an issue there. So if you're ever baffled by a term like TBHQ (tertiary butylhydroquinone, used as a preservative), this is the app for you.

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