Pros
Cons
Our Verdict
You were being totally sincere last New Year’s Eve when you yanked that lampshade off your head and shouted out some semi-lucid babble to nobody in particular about this being the year you finally lose some weight. And though you’ve definitely worked broccoli into your diet since then, you’re not seeing results. You’ve tried to keep your trips to the fast-food drive-thru to a minimum, but they sure do add up fast, don’t they?
Concrete Software has collected nutrition data for thousands of menu items from more than 50 popular restaurant chains. Tap the icon of a restaurant to see a searchable, sortable list of menu items. Each food item is displayed with its amount of calories, fat, carbohydrates, protein, and fiber. Tap on that dish to see its numbers translated as a percentage of a daily diet of 2,000 calories. Don’t see your favorite restaurant listed? The app is updated weekly to add new ones.
It would be nice if Fast Food Calorie Counter could provide some more key numbers, such as sodium and a detailed breakdown of which types of fats—trans or saturated, for example—you’re about to ingest. But the developer is at the mercy of the restaurants, which are sometimes unsurprisingly coy about releasing that kind of information.
Also, despite its name, Fast Food Calorie Counter doesn’t do any counting for you. It’s just a thorough reference. You’ll have to do the counting in your head.
But once you’ve decided on that Jack in the Box sirloin cheeseburger that packs a whopping 1,070 calories and 71 grams of fat, do you really need your iPhone to tell you whether you’re nuts to add the Oreo shake and its 1,290 calories and 67 grams of fat to the order?
Fast Food Calorie Counter is compatible with any iPhone or iPod touch running iPhone 2.x software update.
[Tony Craine is a freelance writer, playwright, and voice actor in Chicago.]