The Life Ledger

Fitness is a way of life.

It’s getting harder and harder to find actual food in the grocery stores these days. It seems every package I pick up lists at least three ingredients I can’t pronounce, let alone imagine where it comes from. Where exactly does natural red dye come from? (Believe me, you want to know the answer to this question - keep reading.) What the heck is polyvinylpyrrolidone? If you, like me, feel you shouldn’t need a degree in organic chemistry in order to pick your next meal, meet your new best friend for the iTouch and iPhone: Food Additives.

Web Artisan’s Food Additives application is, first and foremost, an example of a beautiful, well-written and organized interface. Food Additives lists more than 450 ingredients, organized by name, international number, risk level, symptom and diet type. Recognizing the overwhelmingly tediousness in scrolling through 450+ items, Food Additives provides a tappable letter/number strip along the right side - one tap skips to the beginning of that letter.

Tapping a list item reveals the details page. WebArtisan uses several layout tricks, including color-coding and front/back panels, to present a lot of information in a small space. The front panel displays the international number, name, other names the ingredient might be known as, use or function, products in which the ingredient might typically be found, the ingredient’s origin, icons indicating countries currently listing the ingredient as unapproved and a color-coded background indicating risk level. Tapping the page reveals the back panel, which displays side effects, recommended daily intake and dietary restrictions. As a nice touch, this panel also includes an information icon linked to the ingredient’s wikipedia page.

Obviously, Food Additives is not going to be helpful at the Olive Garden or most other restaurants, as they post only minimal nutrition information and no food ingredients. However, Food Additives provides invaluable assistance when choosing between Oreos and carrots - one look at all the non-food chemicals contained in Oreos, and I’m headed back to the vegetables. Many restaurants, like Subway and Dunkin’ Donuts, list ingredients on their websites as well.

As thorough as Food Additives is, there are a few things I’d like to see added to the next release. First, I’d like to be able to search for names and alternative names. A linked glossary of terms would be nice (many people may not know what an emulsifier does), and a pronunciation key or even sound file for ingredient names would be a nice added feature. These are, however, only niggling requests for additions to what is already a polished, user-friendly and informative application. Food Additives is well worth the $3.99 price tag.

And by the way, natural red food dye #4, or Carmine, is derived from crushing and boiling dried insects. Next time you’re picking out your favorite yogurt, take a peek at the ingredients label and look up unrecognized ingredients with Food Additives - you might just be surprised by what you discover.

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photo credit: Infidelic

Medical News Today carried a story about a program at Ohio State University where doctors are storing large amounts of medical information on secured USB drives for heart surgery patients to carry with them. Should the patient suffer an emergency, the treating physician could review the patient’s entire history quickly.

“We usually include their most recent clinic visit, ultrasounds of their heart, heart catheterizations and, in some instances, if it’s important, we may have images of their heart,” says Dr. Curt Daniels, a cardiologist at Ohio State University Medical Center.

Dr. Daniels and his staff came up with the idea of using the jump drives. Daniels says the medical history of some heart patients is very complex, and if they ever find themselves needing medical attention in another city or country, every minute matters. That’s where the jump drive can help. Any doctor, anywhere in the world, can simply plug it into their computer to answer any questions they might have.

“What heart surgeries have they had? How should their heart really be arranged, and how strong or weak is their heart? Do they have valve problems? Is that part of their history? Having that information right away, we believe, will improve medical care for our patients,” says Daniels.

I tried tracking down exactly what application, if any, is used to store the data, but couldn’t find anything. I suspect they simply use encryption software to protect the data, and store files in folders. It would be interesting to see someone develop a software application that encrypts the data, automatically runs when the USB drive mounts, and provides a searchable index to all information stored on the drive. Extra points for automatic language translation for patients travelling to other countries.

If you’re interested in creating one of these jump drives yourself, work with your doctor to accumulate the medical information pertinent to you and use a program like TrueCrypt to protect your data. Just make sure you carry instructions on decrypting the data, and don’t leave both the drive and the instructions at the same restaurant in Italy.