The habit of tracking what you eat isn’t new. People have been watching their weight for the longest time and there are several health and fitness programs out there that encourage people to count calories. However, a lot of these programs not only cost a lot of money, but also make eating healthy feel like a chore.

Enter Foodzy, a startup that injects some gamification into healthy eating. Aside from keeping track of what you eat, Foodzy rewards you for great eating habits. For instance, if you’re always eating fruits and vegetables, you’ll be able to earn corresponding badges. Keep improving your eating habits and you’ll get a chance to unlock more badges.

How It Works

Want to start tracking and improving your eating habits? Here’s how Foodzy works. After you sign up for an account, you’ll be able to enter or “check in” things that you ate that day. Foodzy already has a huge database of over 200,000 products, so once you start typing what you ate, check to see if you’ll be able to select that particular product from the database. (If they don’t have it yet, then you’re more than welcome to add foods to the database.)

Enter in enough meals and food items and you could start collecting badges for your eating habits.  Do you eat a lot of foods rich in Vitamin E? Then keeping doing that and you’ll soon earn that “Forever Young” badge. Do you love Mexican food and put Tabasco on everything? Then you just might earn the “Some like it Hot” badge.

Eatzies

Foodzy also lets you to check in entire meals all at once, with the use of “Eatzies”. Just enter the individual ingredients into the Foodzy system and create an Eatzie for the particular meal. All Eatzies are saved, allowing you to check in to them without typing up the ingredients all over again.

Get Social

Checkins? Badges? If all this sounds familiar and you’re thinking “Foursquare” then you’re absolutely right. Foodzy is the Foursquare of healthy eating. Aside from offering rewards and allowing you to keep track of your eating habits, Foodzy is also a social network that enables you to check out what your friends are eating.

Think of Foodzy’s social aspect as extra motivation to eat healthy. Since you’ll be able to see the eating habits of your friends (and vice versa) everyone will be able to weigh in advice and tips on how to improve eating habits. Additionally, Foodzy badges allow users to show off their achievements, and can incentivize them to collect more.

Free vs. Paid

To start users off, Foodzy offers a basic version that lets people checkin food and interact with their friends. You’ll also be able to view your food record for the last 30 days and collect certain badges. If you’re really digging your Foodzy experience, then they also have a Pro version for just $15 a year.

Going pro offers unlimited storage for checkins as well as the chance to unlock all the badges. And if you’re really serious about improving your diet, then you’ll be pleased to know that the Pro version gives you a dashboard to help you analyze your eating habits and you can get personalized diet plans to help you achieve your health and fitness goals.