Eating Clean? You Need These Apps!

Eating Clean? You Need These Apps!
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Despite spending summers knocking back the beer garden booze and winters mainlining warm pies and crumbles, it turns out that autumn is the worst season for weight gain. But instead of Googling 'quick easy diet' faster than you can polish off a bag of M&S Cheese Tasters, turn to clean eating to boost your health and slim down in the process.

The easiest way to make the change? Apps. With recipes, meal plans, cooking tips and shopping lists in the palm of your hand, eating clean isn't as scary as some might think.

Here's a round-up of the newest and best healthy eating apps on the market.

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Honestly Healthy

When Victoria Beckham and Fearne Cotton are fans, you need to sit up and take note. Natasha Corrett, step-sister to Sienna Miller, is the now-famous advocate of alkaline eating, where foods are chosen and combined in dishes in order to maintain a healthy body pH. Following two hit books, HH have just launched their new app which not only lists over 60 of their best recipes, but also has sharing functionality so you can post your efforts online.

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The Chemeleon

Clean eating means reading labels - all the experts say that you should be looking to favour foods that come with the shortest list of ingredients imaginable, or ones that are so fresh they don't need a label at all. But if you're on a budget or happen not to live round the corner from a daily farmer's market, it isn't always doable. This app helps by storing info on pretty much every additive under the sun - good and bad - so when you're faced with an ingredient you don't know, type it in and see if it's one to embrace or one to avoid. If it's good enough for Miranda Kerr, who listed it as one of her top 10 favourite lifestyle apps in an interview with Vogue, it's definitely good enough for us.

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Whole Foods

For the average person, wandering around Whole Foods Market is like getting a sneak peek into Gwyneth Paltrow's kitchen - kale chips and chia seeds galore. The downside to that is it can be a little intimidating and overwhelming, which is why we're so in love with their newly-updated app. With over 3000 healthy and inventive recipes, it blows all the other apps out of the water in terms of variety and the On-Hand search allows you to get suggestions based on ingredients you have hanging around. Plus, you can sync your favourite recipes and shopping lists with Whole Foods' online store to make shopping for the good stuff super easy.

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Deliciously Ella

After being diagnosed with an auto-immune disease in 2011 which left her bed-bound, teenager Ella overhauled her sugary diet, cutting out gluten, refined sugar, meat and diary. We're not saying you need to go that far, but her plant-based recipes might persuade you otherwise. The app is great if you want a healthy kickstart, as it sets out food plans for five different detoxing 'cleanses', and it's the ultimate in food porn - the main reason Ella's blog went off the scale in the first place.

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Food Switch

We all know breaking old food shop habits is one of the toughest nuts to crack when making healthy lifestyle changes and that's exactly why you need this app in your iPhone armoury. Developed by bona fide healthy organisations, including the George Institute of Global Health and The British Heart Foundation, it helps you to learn the nutritional value of your favourite foods - and healthier alternatives. Just scan the barcode of whatever item is tempting you and the app gives you a colour coded traffic-light breakdown of its fat, sugar and salt content as well as healthier options. Perfect for making small positive changes in your basket every time you shop.

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Food Fix Up

Food Fix Up, £1.99

An Instagrammer turned 'Apper', Stefanie Neal is obsessed with good food. She's not a nutritionist, chef or health guru but she's an Aussie food lover whose skills include turning an Instagram feed into a veritable catwalk of mouthwatering plates. Although there's tons of raw and vegan recipes on the app, Stefanie is a firm believer in adapting your diet to suit your body so expect lots of meat and fish-based meals too. There's even dishes tailored to the tasty homemade condiments that are listed!

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