How The George Institute’s FoodSwitch App is Helping Users Make Better Food Choices

The George Institute for Global Health in Australia has a Food Policy Group that has been concentrating on finding ways to support individuals and help prevent diet-related illnesses and diseases. The Food Policy Group developed and launched a smartphone application called FoodSwitch that does just that. The FoodSwitch application helps empower its users to make better food choices by giving alternate options for foods from crowdsourced data. The application can suggest better, healthier food options for users when dining out or shopping at their local supermarket. Read on more to find out more about this app and how it is helping users become healthier through better food choices.

What is the FoodSwitch App?

FoodSwitch is a revolutionary smartphone application that is empowering Australian shoppers to make healthier food choices and help reduce their risk of dying early from two of the nation’s biggest killers – heart attack and stroke.

Users simply scan the bar codes of foods in the grocery store. The app displays healthier food choices based on the nutritional value of close to 40,000 packaged food products found in Australian supermarkets. All of that data in the app is the result of three years of research by pre-eminent food and health policy experts from The George Institute for Global Health in partnership with George Clinical.

The app can be customised for different health concerns and the needs of each user. It now includes other options to help specifically tailor the app including: SaltSwitch, FatSwitch, EnergySwitch, SugarSwitch, and GlutenSwitch.These different filters within the application help the app to cater to a wider variety of needs and people.

Since the Australian launch in 2012, the app has been released in New Zealand, the United Kingdom, South Africa, India, and China. They are working on a USA version of the app now.

The FoodSwitch app has truly been making a difference for its users. It was recently announced as a top 10 global innovative solution.

Professor Bruce Neal of The George Institute explains how FoodSwitch has made a healthier diet more accessible, “Good eating habits are one of the best ways to prevent disease and as long as food labels remain a mystery to many, FoodSwitch will be here to help Australians do what they can to reduce the risk of dying early from two of the nation’s biggest killers: heart attack and stroke.” The Foodswitch app helps users better understand food labels quickly and easily while in the process of shopping. If a user scans an item that isn’t good for them, the app can suggest alternate food choices. Shoppers can easily get overwhelmed when the task of shopping becomes even more of a chore trying to decipher food labels and figure out what is healthy and what isn’t. Some foods that seem healthy are often shockingly high in sugar, sodium, or saturated fats. The app quickly and easily tells you what to put in your shopping basket and which items to leave on the shelf. The application also works when dining out at a variety of different restaurants and uses crowd sourced information from other users to apply to a broad range of restaurants and dishes.

About George Clinical

In 2007, The George Institute for Global Health launched George Clinical, a leading contract research organisation (CRO) in Asia. George Clinical is the first and largest commercial enterprise from the institute. George Clinical is headquartered in Sydney, Australia but has operational hubs in ten other countries. George Clinical delivers the full-range of clinical trial services across all trial phases and in a variety of therapeutic specialisations. George Clinical has contributed directly to several landmark clinical trials, the results of which have changed clinical practice. This grant will bring The George Institute for Global Health much closer to reaching even more people all over the world.