Approved Foods

Approved Foods is a native iOS app built to solve a specific problem for anyone following a structured diet: knowing instantly whether a food item is safe to eat. Rather than scrolling through ingredient lists or cross-referencing nutrition databases manually, users simply scan a barcode or snap a photo, and the app tells them whether that item fits within their dietary restrictions.

The app starts by letting users define their diet profile, whether that's keto, paleo, Whole30, gluten-free, vegan, or a custom set of restrictions. That profile becomes the filter through which every food item is evaluated. Barcode scanning pulls product data and runs it against the user's specific rules, delivering a clear approved or not-approved result in seconds. Photo-based recognition adds a second input method for situations where a barcode isn't available, like fresh produce or restaurant plates.

The technical challenge here was building a reliable evaluation engine that could map the complexity of real dietary rules against inconsistent and sometimes incomplete food data. Nutritional labeling varies widely across brands and regions, and "compliant" means different things depending on the diet. The architecture had to be flexible enough to support multiple rule sets while still returning fast, confident answers to the user.

Approved Foods was designed and developed in-house at Morph Dev as a product exploration.