Is there a more universal desire right now than the “upgrade”?

Better yet, nearly instant upgrade. It actually gives me an absurd giddy feeling. Example: This weekend, I upgraded to WordPress 3.0. The interface doesn’t look that different, but I watched the video documenting the tweaks and fixes, and felt lighter anyway. It’s a little voice that squeals: my blog is shiny – and so am I.

So I get a kick out of MealUpgrade.com, a new website by Shape Up America and the National Turkey Foundation (bizarre? Scroll to the caveat…).

It’s an “app” submitted to the Apps for Healthy Kids Competition, an initiative by First Lady Michelle Obama to help combat childhood obesity. The competition challenges developers to build apps that use the USDA Nutrition Data Set (made available via the President’s Open Government project) in creative, engaging ways. Meal Upgrade allows you to choose a typical dish and learn how to “upgrade” it (reduce calories) by substituting ingredients.

For example, the snapshot below shows how to upgrade from a hamburger to a turkey burger, with other options like switching to whole wheat bread and having baked potato instead of fries.

Pluses:

• I think kids will enjoy it, if only for the fun of hitting the Upgrade button and briefly sitting in uncertainty.
• Could be quite educational. For example, you could have students guess upgrades and see if they correspond to what the app suggests.

  It could also tie into doctor-education projects like the one mentioned recently by Healthymaginations, through which doctors learn how to “select, purchase, and cook” healthy food, hopefully influencing patients.

Not-so-pluses (but could be improved!):

It’s unfortunate that the website is not actually “working” in the background, because the possible meals that can be upgraded are “hard-coded”, so to speak. I would thus suggest:

• Dramatically expanding the menu. For example, including snacks, desserts, and beverages.
• Adding functionality that allows you to tell the app what ingredients you have available, and have it calculate in real-time the possible upgrades you can make to the dish of choice.
• Allowing users to submit suggestions for upgrades. And vote on them too
• Making a corresponding iPhone app so that you can begin planning upgrades on the go and at the grocery store.

And a caveat: as this project is sponsored by the National Turkey Foundation, the upgrades are heavily biased towards substituting turkey for other protein…slightly annoying yet understandable!

Parting words

The submission period for Apps for Health Kids is ending on June 30th (my birthday!) and then the voting will begin. I hope to see a lot of other great entries, and am super-psyched about the concept of Open Government.

Next, I’m thinking – Upgrade My Workout?

Lifehacker’s already got Upgrade Your Life so now let’s focus on specific parts of that!

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Tags: data.gov, food, healthy eating, meals, National Turkey foundation, Obama, obesity, prevention, public health, recipes, Shape Up America, USDA