After I graduated high school, I made the choice to start eating much healthier than I was eating in the years before. No more lunches of 3 slices of pizza and loaded subs (at the same time), no more eating a twix bar along with an array of candy bars as “snacks”. The sweets were gone. I was on a mission to reform my garbage disposal eating ways. I was starting to feel yucky. A combination of no more school sports to play and burn off the crap food I was eating. My metabolism was still of fire and my 3k calorie a day junk food diet wasn’t phasing my weight, but it was turning me sluggish.

I eased into healthy eating, bit by bit. Eventually, no I wasn’t a clean eater, but I was a semi-clean eater. 85% of my food consumption was good for me, fresh and all natural, no additives. The other 15% was semi-good for me. Or so I thought.

More than 10 years later, I learned that my semi-good eating was in fact – not. Downloading this spiffy new app on my Android phone called Fooducate, I’ve learned that even the foods that the food companies are pushing as “healthy” are in fact not.

I drive my husband nuts by dragging out our shopping excursions more now with this app, but given my Dr’s orders low-sodium diet, and my never ending quest to eat healthy, it’s necessary.

Kashi and Annie’s, while they promote organic and healthy eating, I have found have higher sodium levels than say Sunbeam granola bars and are famous for including a variety of sugars in their foods. Something I would have never known had I not taken 2 seconds to scan the barcode into Fooducate. Both brands score only C grades, shocking, given you’d expect no less than a B+ for food brands that promote being healthy.

What I’ve learned in the weeks that I have had this program is, we’re a strong A average eating family. There are slip ups here and there where something scores a C, like with dinner I cooked the other night – our chicken sausage scores a C, but all the other ingredients and our veggie sides all nabbed A’s across the board, but we’re a pretty healthy household.

Now if I could just get my husband to ditch the Peanut Butter Crunch Bars by Little Debbie…

For more information about Fooducate, visit Fooducate.com or check out the app in the Google Play Store.