Kurbo: Mobile Lifestyle App for Kids and Teens

Kurbo is a mobile app targeted towards kids and teens to help them learn about and maintain healthy eating and exercising habits. The app teaches kids about nutrition, labeling foods as green (good to eat anytime), yellow (eat in moderation), and red (eat sparingly).

Games on the app teach users about serving size and portions, and about exercise intensities. The program comes with a weekly coaching session to help provide additional support. Users set their goals and use Kurbo to help structure and plan for the week ahead.

If a user is allotted 35 reds a week and is attending a birthday party on Saturday, he can plan ahead by eating less “red” foods during the week so that he can fit in eating cake on Saturday (cake is definitely a red food). Kurbo doesn’t impose set diets on children, instead it gives them the ability to portion their calories and make small changes for themselves. Initially licensed from Stanford University and stress tested by SUNY Buffalo research, Kurbo aims to be a wellness and lifestyle app for children and teens, and lets them make decisions versus imposing rules. With this approach, 80% of Kurbo users lose weight. You can download Kurbo now for iOS devices.

Rise: Affordable and Reliable Personal Nutrition Coaching

Rise is a new nutrition coaching app that makes it affordable to have structured, personal, and specialized nutrition coaching. Your personal diet coach gives you daily feedback and advice based on what you eat and what types of habits you keep. The feedback is tailored to each individual’s changing lifestyle.

The app makes interacting with a personal nutritionist easy. By taking photos of every snack and meal, you are giving your nutritionist a reliable way to shape your diet in real time. The app itself is well designed, although taking pictures of every meal takes a little getting used to. My coach was friendly and experienced. The personal attention I got made me more cognizant of what I was eating and when. After spending several days in Las Vegas and eating haphazardly, her appraisals of my meals made me focus on eating fruits and vegetables upon arriving back at home. The coaching works – and the native interface doubles as a food diary. It’s definitely an app to try on the way to modifying eating habits for the better.