NHS Food Scanner vVARY

Department of Health and Social Care (Digital)

About this app

Developer Description

Bring the sugar, sat fat and salt to life and really see inside your food.

Ever wondered how much sugar is in your favourite cola or how much salt is in your sauce you are adding to your meals? Find out and discover healthier choices with the NHS Food Scanner app!

So it's time to get scanning! Just find a food or drink barcode or use the in-app search functionality to quickly reveal what's inside. You might be surprised by what you find!

Be amazed with the Augmented Reality within the app that brings to life the sugar, sat fat and salt in your food and drink right in front of your eyes!

The app is based on the most widespread data available to us. We're continuously working to improve it and we're adding more and more products all the time. The nutrient data in this app has been supplied and check by our partners at Brandbank and Food Switch and is updated weekly.

The number of sugar cubes, sat fat and salt sachets shown in app are based on grams per pack/100g/ml/portion when that information is available.

The weight of one sugar cube is equal to 4 grams
The weight on one sat fat lump is equal to 1 gram
The weight of one salt sachet is equal to 0.5 grams

It's now time to get Scanning!

Version Information

Version: -
Downloads: 500K+
Updated on: -
Released: Feb 3, 2026
Requires: Android Varies with device

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NHS Food Scanner users say on Google Play

★★★★★

Rosemary Charles-Lewis

Excellent to aid healthy eating. This app is brilliant when shopping to help make better choices in your eating plan, also giving alternative things to purchase. It informs you of sugar, salt and fats contents that are both good and bad. Especially the fat contents. Wish I had known about this app years ago.

★★★★

Ziggy Newman

Good app but misleading at times. Overall this is a helpful app for making healthy choices when it comes to diet. However it completely misses harmful artificial sweeteners (which are worse than sugar) and implies that Coke Zero and sugar free fizzy drinks are nutritious choices when they are far from it. Overall a great app but I would expand on the traffic light system to include artificial sweeteners so better health choices can be made overall.

★★★

Simon Davis

This app was a bit hit and miss. It found some products but not others, it recommended that Pepsi Max Cherry was a good food choice, it didn't recognise packets of crisps, the AR stuff was unnecessary and didn't seem to be based on any user need, but the UI was nice and simple and clear. The app could be useful for telling you more about the food, like telling you if it was ultra processed like some other paid apps out there.

★★

Dan Burcea

It's alright but not all food are scannable, I uninstalled it for now. Because there's no use for it.

★

Arthur Magill

Recommends alternatives with artificial sweeteners in preference to sugar - that's a ticking time bomb, with very little research into their long term effects. Also, the app gives sugar per pack - I haven't yet found an item where I can see per portion info - which is next to useless. It's a neat idea that just doesn't work. Food is complicated - nutrition can't be reduced to 3 parameters.