Good health isn’t about individual choice by any stretch, but that doesn’t mean we’re dismissed from being smarter and more responsible in working to obtain and maintain it.

Enter Fooducate, a website and mobile app developed with the intention of informing food choices. Typing in and/or capturing a product’s barcode via mobile phone camera returns an A-to-D product grade (no food gets an F grade), an explanation of the grade and a set of healthier alternatives. Fooducate works this magic starting with a database of well over 200,000 products that grows daily when app users provide photos of new products’ labels, nutrition facts and ingredients.

Food ought to become less of an impulse buy and more of a thoughtful choice as a source for fueling a day and enriching a life. Lifestyle integration of technology, engagement tactics and learning for positive effect hits the sweet spot for having an impact in that regard. Fooducate is fun. It teaches. It sparks conversation. It rides a virtuous cycle of building community even as it taps into that resource to get better at the scope of education it provides.

Those wondering how we’ll make the trip from where we are – 35% of us obese, 58% of us facing chronic conditions – to where we want to be could certainly look to this model for inspiration.