Mobile Version

Mobile Version

Dietician is a unique and one-of-a-kind application. There is no other app quite like this in the app store. Dietician creates a meal plan depending on certain criteria that you select (type of diet, etc.) and it also figures out what meals you should eat, and a grocery list to go along with it.

4.3/4

Like most health tracking applications in the app store, they track what you have consumed and any exercises you might have done. Dietician is the other part of this, it helps you to stay on track of a healthy diet. I was really surprised by the amount of information that was provided along with the options I was given. Dietician is based on SmartDiets.com way of creating a meal plan for your diet.

When you first begin the app you will be asked some personal questions such as age and weight and a goal weight you want to get to.

You have the option of choosing one of five diet plans – Balanced Diet Plan, Low-Carb Diet Plan, Athletic Diet Plan, Splurge Diet Plan, or an Extreme Weight Loss Plan. If you cannot decide which one to choose you can simply tap on the blue arrow next to each plan and it will give you details about each diet plan – recommendation for use by certain BMIs, by what genders, and a brief description on the diet plan.

After you choose your diet plan you can choose your meal variety – Lots of Variety, Reasonable Variety, or Small Variety. Again depending on which option you select, it will briefly explain the option you have chosen. Again as I said before I was impressed by the information given, not just for the diet plan, but the ease of deciding and being explained to me what each option is and whether I should do it or not.

The next thing you will do is select certain foods that you do not want planned into your meal plan such as Dairy, Eggs, Frozen Meals, or anything else.

And finally you’ll choose your desired effort you want to but into preparing your meals – Ultra-Low, Low, Medium, or High. Having my fair share of diets, a thing to remember here is that – the less preparation you do, the more likely the food is going to be pre-processed and not as healthy, this is coming form me, not the app.

After everything is done a meal plan will be customized for you based on your previous selections. After that, you’re ready to go. If you later decide to change your meal plan/options, you can do so in the app under the options screen.

After you first initial time of entering the app, you won’t be asked again about the information unless you go to the Options tab and change your diet plan. The next time and thereafter, you will open the application into the home screen. The home screen displays your current weight and your goal weight as well as the meals for that day. The icons next to each meal listed represent Breakfast, Snack, Lunch, Dinner, & another Snack from top to bottom. By tapping on one of your meals, you will receive the name of the meal, the ingredients needed to make it, and the preparation instructions (& aprox. time). It also includes Nutritional Information.

On the meals tab, you can view a calendar and by tapping on a certain date, you will be displayed the meals planned for that day underneath the calendar. By tapping on one of the meals you have the option to replace the meal with other items. Meals are only generated a month at a time. Additional meals can be added via the options menu (in blocks of 30 days.)

Under the weight tab, you can track and graph your weight loss & BMI. This is the only thing that this application tracks – weight loss & you BMI “reduction.” Of course you can view it in a list view and view a visual graph. The graph can be viewed by all the point of entry, points of entry in the past month, 3 months, 6 months, or the past year. The same can be done with the BMI.

Under the groceries tab, you are given a list that can be viewed by that current day, current day plus tomorrow, current day plus the next seven days, or today plus the next 14 days, depending on how far you want to shop in advance. By tapping on each item, a list for that day (plus any other days) of the required item is shown is needed and how much. This way you can check off whether or not you have enough for those planned days. The little red circle means that you do not have that item for one (or many ) of your meals. If it is orange that means that you have checked off a certain amount, but don’t have enough to satisfy that certain amount required for those scheduled meal(s). If is green, that means you are okay on that item and there is no need to buy any more of that item for the meals you are shopping for.

Issues:
While the graph of weight loss is nice I would like to have it full screen or the ability to tilt the iPhone into Landscape mode to trigger a full-screen landscape view of the graph.
I had to e-mail the developer because I did not understand the icons next to the meals or what each one meant. It would be nice to have this explained somewhere at the beginning.
It would be nice to only block certain common allergy foods – for instance, foods such as peanuts or onions,not general categories of foods.

Overall:
I really enjoyed this application and at only $9.99, I really recommend this application. I am sure you know just as much as I do, if you are going on a diet, the hardest part of a diet is staying on top of your meals. A few things I’d like to see in an update: On the home page I’d would like to see the ability to swipe across the screen in order to see the next day’s meals. In the grocery list view, it would be nice to view the total amount of an item needed rather than having to calculate it on your own by adding each day up.

Note*: Before starting any sort of diet you should consult your physician to make sure you’re not going to blow up and die or anything of that nature.

Pros:
-Only meal planning app in the app store
-Customizes meal plans for you
-Ability to substitute certain meals with others

Cons:
-When substituting meals, you are fairly limited to your options.
-Lack of item totals needed in shopping list
-Weight on home page is a little hard to read at times-Graph is a little cramped in portrait mode.
- Needs landscape mode

Pros:
-Picture with every Spice or Herb
-Alternative names listed with each herb/spice
-Full description and uses of herb/spice.

Cons:
-List text can sometimes be hard to read due to background image.
-No search
-No start-from-top (explained above)

Herbs and spices is a simple database application. The application explains a multitude of spices – what they are, their history, a picture and other international names. I find this app versatile for anyone that cooks or is wandering what the heck Borage is.

Interface:
The interface is relatively simple. The names of the spices are listed next to mini pictures of those correlating spices. By tapping on one of them you will see an enlarged picture of the spice and all it’s information

While the database contains several herbs/spices, I quickly found that it wasn’t as complex as I previously perceived. It has a mixture of 66 spice & herbs and within each item, it has other correlating names it may go by. I realized that some of the spices that I was looking for were found in the “other names” information paragraph under one of the ingredients. It would be nice to include these in the list as well or add a search to the app that would search this field.

Issues:
The only problems I had with this application had to do with the interface. The initial screen that lists the spices/herbs – while the background picture might add to the user’s experience, here it is a little distracting and it is sometimes hard to read the names in contrast with the background.

The second thing is – if you scroll down the page in the details screen, then exit back to the list, and again go to a different spice/herb, you will find that the details screen is in the same place as you left it before. Meaning it does not automatically begin at the top of the screen (view video to see this).

Overall:
I think this is a good initial start for this application, however, there are still a few things that need to be ironed out – background image needs to lightened or different; automatic scroll-to-top needs to be done and a search-able names database would be very nice to have. I hope to see more spices & herbs added to the database.