The Eatery

Admittedly, I was a little skeptical when I first read about The Eatery by Massive Health Inc. The idea behind the app is to record the user’s eating and drinking habits by taking photos of the things that they consume. By doing so, users will become more conscious of their nutrition choices. The Eatery serves a modern take on a similar system in which dieters write down their daily consumption of food and drink.

The app features a clean interface that is as equally intuitive as it is slick. Users tap on the “snap” tab to photograph their meal, which the app uploads to The Eatery community. There, other users rate how healthy each meal is. Users can then browse through their uploaded meal photographs, getting feedback from other dieters on their diet choices. The Eatery even provides trend information on user’s eating habits, helping them keep track of whether they’re eating better or worse lately. The hope is the social pressure from other users will encourage users to eat more healthily.

Of course, The Eatery is only as helpful as users are honest when they use it. Personally, as someone who has a weakness for unhealthy eating, I have a difficult enough time privately keeping track of my daily food choices by writing it all down. But sharing with the Internet that I dined upon a California Burrito for dinner -- and including a photograph of my debauchery to boot? Truthfully, I’m not exactly jumping at the opportunity. That said, it’s this social pressure that – if users are willing to play The Eatery’s game honestly – will likely make it a successful diet tool.

Users can also rate other’s meal choices, so it’s not just all about having one’s own diet judged by the collective conscious of the Internet. And there’s also Facebook integration, which makes the experience even more personal. For more timid users, though, they can use The Eatery anonymously.

All around, this is a modernized version of an old popular diet regimen – one that may in fact work even better than the original. Plus, it’s free, so kudos to Massive Health Inc. for that.

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