Social Honeycomb

Five Helpful Food 2.0 Tools

Earlier in the summer, I blogged about beYOU.tv, and encouraged you (and myself) to live a little healthier. I don’t feel that I’ve been doing my best at following my own advice lately, but I’m embarking on some lifestyle changes that will no doubt kick my butt into gear.

One of those changes is that I’m not letting myself order delivery and takeout every day anymore. It’s easy, it’s comfortable, it’s familiar–but it’s an expensive and calorie-filled habit that isn’t helping me reach any fitness goals. The solution? I have to prepare some of my own meals. Ummm, easier said than done, Amanda.

I have no idea how to make food. I can use a microwave and I can open pints of sherbet. It’s a very special day if I make an omelette. But that’s the extent of my skills. The thought of having to prepare my own food is daunting to say the least. But I’ve found some helpful resources out there on the social web that I’ll be playing with as I explore the many unfamiliar appliances and utensils in my kitchen.

Zeer is a resource to help nutritards like me learn more about what you’re buying at the store, and what you’re putting in your body. The site’s community feature enables members to share advice and information about various food products related to specific lifestyles or grub preferences. You can also browse through huge lists of products to find better or tastier choices for yourself. This is a valuable tool: Zeer helps you shop smarter so you can eat better.

Tasty Planner seems like exactly what I need. This site allows you to search for new recipes based on keywords or choices from a tag cloud, and has Recipe Box and Weekly Planner functions to help you along the way. Once you find a recipe you like, you can add it to your Recipe Box so that it’s saved, and you can go a step further by adding it to a Weekly Planner that helps you outline your meals and nutrition for the week. For someone who hasn’t planned a meal in her life, Tasty Planner seems like a great, easy way to get a healthy diet underway.

SuperCook is an interesting concept. You enter what foods you already have in your kitchen, and the site will generate recipes for you based on those ingredients. For someone who really has no creative cooking skills to fall back on, and for someone who is pretty lazy when it comes to trekking out to the grocery store on the train (it’s so hard to get your grocery shopping done without a car!), this resource may come in handy. It’s sort of like a Top Chef challenge without having to think about anything.

Cookthink is all about cravings, which can be a girl’s worst enemy. This site lets you find recipes that may satisfy your various cravings, and you can search by entering a keyword, choosing an ingredient, picking a dish, selecting a cuisine, or focusing on a mood. Based on the cravings you enter, Cookthink gives you a list of recipes that will probably make your tummy growl and send you running to the kitchen.

FoodFeed is a strange creature. It’s like Twitter for eating. The premise is simple: you make updates to the site about what you’re having to eat and you can search for other users who have having the same thing. On the About page, the site claims that it isn’t really useful, but on some level I disagree. There’s a lot to be said about regularly, honestly, and publicly announcing what you’re eating, and that may drive you to make healthier choices so you aren’t forced to reveal that you’re having 2 Big Macs per day.

Have you tried any of these Food 2.0 sites? What are your thoughts? Are you hungry yet???