SparkPeople (iTunes link) is a free app that tracks daily food intake, calorie expenditure and overall weight. It’s a mobile extension of SparkPeople.com, a popular health and fitness site that claims six million members. With the SparkPeople app, iPhone users can enter their daily food intake and exercise totals and it will sync up with their online account. If you’re looking for an app to track calories or exercise, this one should be at the top of your list. We think SparkPeople is one of the best calorie-tracking apps currently available — that it’s free is just icing on the cake.
To get started, you’ll have to set up a free account within the app or at SparkPeople.com. Answer a few quick questions, including your height and weight, and the site will calculate your calorie and exercise goals. The main page of the app displays a summary page showing how much progress you’ve made for the day.
The interface is intuitive and easy to use. To add food for the day, tap Food and then Add to search the food database. What we like best about SparkPeople is its extensive food database. There are literally thousands of foods available; if one of your favorite foods isn’t included, you can add it manually or search foods added by other SparkPeople members.
The fitness tracker works very similarly. Tap Fitness on the main page to search a database of exercise activities. The database includes common activities like running and cycling, in addition to more obscure exercises like belly dancing or rappelling. The app includes some totally random activities like heavy digging and hacky sack, but common strength exercises (bicep curls, lunges, etc.) are strangely absent. Enter your total workout time for your selected activity and the app will automatically calculate the calories you’ve burned.
Tap Weight to enter your current weight for the day. The app displays a graph so you can see at a glance if your weight is moving in the right direction. In addition to calories, exercise and weight, the SparkPeople app has an interactive graphic where you can keep track of how many glasses of water you drink each day.
One of the best things about the SparkPeople app is its versatility. You’re not limited to entering your information on the iPhone — if you’re in front of a computer, you can do it there instead. The information you enter on your iPhone is available online and vice versa.
The SparkPeople app does lack some of the functionality found at SparkPeople.com. In the online version you can copy meals from one day to the next, so you don’t have to manually re-enter each item if you eat the same breakfast every day. That’s missing on the iPhone app, but you can still save individual foods to your “favorites” list. In addition, the simple reports within the app are pretty lame compared to the extensive reporting you can get online.
Conclusion
Having a web-based counterpart makes the SparkPeople app much more valuable than its competitors. It has a huge database of food items that is unmatched by other free calorie-tracking apps I’ve tested, and the app itself is incredibly easy to use. Some users reviewing the app at the iTunes store claim it crashes a lot, but I’ve never encountered a single crash. Additional reporting functionality would be nice, but we highly recommend this app.
SparkPeople is a free download from the iTunes App Store.
