Fooducate App Helps Consumers Eat Healthy

Fooducate is an app for the iPhone and Android that allows consumers to get easy-to-understand information about the quality of a product by scanning the bar code with their smart phone. A first-place winner of the U.S. Surgeon General’s Healthy Apps Challenge, Fooducate was developed by dieticians and parents to help consumers see through some of the “tricks” product manufacturers use to conceal unhealthy ingredients, including artificial food colorings (which are controversial among nutritionists and scientists), high-fructose corn syrup, trans fats (which can legally “hide” in foods in small amounts), and various additives.

Fooducate

Lose It! App Wins Surgeon General’s Healthy Apps Challenge

The U.S. Surgeon General recently challenged mobile device application developers to come up with apps that would “provide tailored health information and empower users to engage in and enjoy healthy behavior.” The first place winner in the Fitness/Physical Activity category was Lose It!, an app designed to help users lose weight. According to the Lose It! website, the average user loses 12.3 pounds with the help of the app, with a 99% success rate (defined as losing any amount of weight) over 4 weeks.

Lose It! app

Healthcare Self-Management Suggestions for e-Patients

We are witnessing a transformation of healthcare in the information age. The Internet has become a powerful healthcare resource for both physicians and patients. e-Patients represent a new type of informed health consumer, a term encompassing both primary patients who use the Internet to educate themselves about a given medical condition for their own illness and the friends and family members who go online on their behalf [1].

Cancer Prevention

As much as 70% of all cancers are preventable through diet and lifestyle [1]. Cancer is the leading cause of death in the U.S. for people between the ages of 45 and 74, taking more than 550,000 lives a year. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that 20% of all cancer cases are related to obesity [2]. Highlight HEALTH is taking this opportunity to provide information about choosing healthy lifestyle alternatives to reduce your risks for developing cancer.