Why would I want traffic light labels for my grocery shopping or the burger place?
Many people want to cook and eat healthy, but don’t have the time to do so very often. Convenience products are great because they are – well, convenient. The only problem is: no one really knows how much fat, sugar or salt gets stuffed into those tasty dishes. The FSA has come up with traffic light labels so everyone can clearly see what a product can otherwise hide behind fancy packaging or great advertisement. Unfortunately, it’s voluntary and not many companies use it. Why? Well, once you take a look at our examples, you will know for yourself!
Why would I want to know what’s inside my hamburger / sandwich / pizza / ice cream…?
Many of us have weight problems, quite a few even have problems with actual diseases directly linked to our eating habits: diabetes is the most popular one, spreading like wildfire among younger kids and adults. Cadiovascular problems like high blood pressure, followed by cardiac arrest, etc. are also pretty serious and all of them can be linked to overconsumption of sugar, salt or fat.
None of those nutrients is bad, but it’s up to us to determine the “right” amount. Our apps can help to make this job a little easier since many food companies or fast food restaurants will give you some info, but they don’t promote these things on the front page or have come up with complicated systems no one understands in the short amount of time we have when making our buying decisions.
Why should I download your app(s)?
If you want to know more about the products you buy every day, want to check your daily sugar, fat or salt intake or want to make sure your calories are still in line, our app is one of the easiest ways for doing so! We use it ourselves (that’s why we added fast food – just one of those ideas you come up with when programming during long nights) and so do thousands of customers throughout Europe. Oh, did we mention there is no other app with traffic light labelling right now?
So if you think traffic light labels are a great thing to have on products and always wondered why so few companies use them, here’s your chance to get them for dozens of brands and hundreds, if not thousands of additional products!
I can’t find the company / item I am looking for!
Make sure you search for a product or a company only. If you can’t find something specific, try broadening your search. If you are looking for “fishfingers” for example and receive no match, try “fish” instead. The product may be named “fish fingers”, so unless you include the space in your search it cannot be found.
How do I download the database / updates?
You can download the latest data by pressing the “sync” button in the search screen of the app (it’s the half-round arrow at the top right-hand corner). Make sure you are connected to the internet though! Depending on your connection and the amount of data the app needs to download, this may take a while. We add new products approximately every fortnight so don’t hesitate to update every month or so.
How can I check a product which is not (yet) included?
In case you can’t find a match even after downloading the latest updates (see question before), then you can add any product you like to quick-check yourself:
Go to the settings screen, tap on “Add product to database” and follow the instructions. Once you include all the relevant information, you can find your own products in the big search screen and even sorted into the right category!
My app has a funny language – I can’t find how to change it to XYZ!
That’s a little tricky. The app is smart, it automatically detects your devices language. So when you first download and start it, it checks your device settings and matches the „right“ language. Currently, we support English, German and Spanish. So if you want to use one of those languages, you would normally have this language installed in your device (you can find device languages in „Settings – General – International – Language“). If you have an unsupported language installed like let’s say Italian, well – the app tries to match the best language which may not be the one you prefer. But by changing your iPhone / iPod language to one of those three it will always use the correct one.
What’s the difference between traffic lights and GDA screen?
Traffic light labels are designed for quick orientation. They are based on 100 gram for each product, so everything can be compared to each other.
If you want to know about individual portion sizes, you will need the GDA screen (turn your device into landscape mode). It calculates the amount of nutrients for any portion size you enter. Tap onto one of the columns to see how much salt, fat, sugar or calories this relates to.
If you need more info on traffic light labels or the GDA system, have a look at those sites on Wikipedia.
My products have 150 / 275 / 34 … grams – data for 100 gram is not practical!
Just turn the device into landscape mode and enter any portion size you like at the lower left corner of the screen. The app now calculates the correct nutrition info for you.
How do I find out about calories for individual portion sizes? Or grams of fat / sugar / salt?
Turn the device into landscape mode while you look at the traffic lights and enter the portion size you would like to know more about.
The app now calculates how much salt, sugar, fat or calories this relates to. Just tap on any column and the pop-up will show you the correct value.
The height of the column symbolizes how much of your daily nutrition limit is used up with this portion.
What’s the „TOP“ – sign that sometimes shows up?
TOP-labels are designed to make it even easier for you to find products with the best nutritional value! Every product is sorted into categories and if a product has the lowest calories compared to all the other ones in the same category, we award it a „TOP“ sign. So if you look for ice cream with the least amount of fat or sugar, try to find one with a „TOP“ sign. It may still be red, but you can be sure that this item has less than all its competitors.
I like your app, but are missing feature X… Will you provide an update?
As always, this depends. It took great effort to provide the app the way it is and if enough people like (and obviously buy it), we will be happy to add more features and products to it. So if you like it, please tell your friends or leave recommendation on iTunes for others to read and we will be able to keep the updates coming!
I have a totally different questions which is not being answered – HELP!
Just drop us a line and we’ll be happy to help you personally.