Environmental Working Group Skin Deep mobile app: iPhone and Droid

At long last, my absolute favorite website and beauty tool (yes a website is my favorite beauty tool!) has come out with a super-convenient, awesome app for both iPhone and Droid. You can search for personal care products by their name or by scanning their barcodes, which is great when you’re in a store trying to find the best option. It gives each product a score from 0 (no hazard) to 10 (high hazard). It breaks the ingredients down to let you know why — if at all — the hazard exists.

Think Dirty: iPhone only

Think Dirty is similar to the Skin Deep app, but what I like about Think Dirty is that it actually provides you with cleaner alternatives, which you can then save to a list to remember for the future. You can add all of the items in your bathroom to “My Bathroom Shelf” to get an overall combined score of your products, which is a fun feature. It has over 14,000 products from over 1.5 brands. I like it a lot better than the Skin Deep app, but since it’s only available for iPhone as of right now, I wanted to include both since I think this is a resource everyone should have access to.

Cures A-Z: iPhone and Droid

This is a seriously cool app that I play around on all the time. It has a list of ailments and general symptoms — A-Z from the hangovers to lupus, hair loss to fibromyalgia. When a particular ailment is selected, it gives you the “Background,” “Treatments,” and “Prevention” (if relevant). The background is really helpful, providing general info, causes, symptoms, and triggers. Treatments include supplements and alternative therapies as well as prescription medications that are often prescribed for these conditions. While I like to avoid prescriptions, I believe it is helpful to learn about them. The best part is, it really goes into quite a lot of detail. Whether you just want to learn about how to naturally treat your cold or if you’re looking for detailed information about a specific condition, this app has it all. Of course, I would not consider it the end-all, be-all of medical care or natural health, but it is a handy resource. If you’re like me and constantly ravenous for information regarding your health and natural remedies, you’ll love this app.

Locavore: iPhone and Droid

This app hooks you up with local farmers markets, providing you with a complete list as well as proximity. It also tells you which produce is in season and provides an absolute TON of recipes in which to use them. It’s a great app to use from beginning to end — finding a local market, nabbing some in-season produce, and cooking a delicious meal. My only complaint is that it does not tell you the hours the markets are open, a feature its competitor Farmstand has. However, I love the recipes which is why it made the list!

Dirty Dozen (Environmental Working Group Shopper’s Guide to Pesticides): iPhone and Droid

This app is really just EWG’s Shopper Guide to Pesticides — a list of the Dirty Dozen (the produce with the most trace pesticides) and the Clean Fifteen (the produce with the last trace pesticides) — but really I think it is something everyone should have on them whenever grocery shopping. It helps you save money and your health by prioritizing which produce to buy organic, and which are safer to purchase conventionally-grown.