How often do you actually look at what’s in the food you’re buying?

If you’ve never heard of Yuka, it’s an app that lets you scan the barcode of food products and scores them based on nutritional quality, ingredients, and food additives. It also explains why a product received its score and suggests alternatives.

I’ve had the app for a while now, and it’s become something I use regularly while grocery shopping. I recently scanned a few popular products that many people would probably assume are healthy or performance focused:

• Kodiak Power Cakes Protein Pancake Mix scored 18/100.

• Gatorade Fruit Punch scored 4/100.

What surprised me wasn’t just the scores. It was learning more about some of the additives used in these products, including phosphate based additives like monopotassium phosphate and monocalcium phosphate, which have been studied for potential long term health effects when consumed in excess.

Now, do I think an app should make every nutrition decision for you? Absolutely not.

But I do think it’s an incredible tool for increasing awareness. It gets people to look beyond the marketing on the front of the package and actually read the ingredient list.

As someone who’s passionate about health, fitness, and performance, I believe nutrition is about education, not fear. No app can replace context, and no single food determines your health. But if something encourages us to become more informed consumers and ask better questions about what we’re putting into our bodies, that’s a step in the right direction.

Knowledge leads to better decisions.

This post also appeared in LinkedIn.

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