That smartphone in your hand is great for filling your hunger for calls, texts, and social media, but what about filling your belly?  With some of the current apps available, your phone can go a long way toward satisfying your need for real food.

What apps are now available to help you when you step into the grocery aisles? Let’s take a look.

Grocery Apps

• Anylist. This app will help you to organize multiple grocery lists and share them with your friends and family.

• Fooducate. This is a nutrition assistant. Fooducate educates you on the nutritional values of the items you are interested in purchasing or recommends healthier organic alternatives.

• Grocery IQ. This is a database app that will help you find the products and the coupons to buy them. This app allows you to order and customize your orders.

• Pantry Manager. Super helpful, this app allows you to keep a basic inventory of the stock in your pantry. It prompts you when your stores are low and even finds coupons so you can save money when you buy.

• Redlaser. This allows you to scan barcodes to see if you are getting the best prices on the food and supplies you are buying. It allows you to search for coupons and find nutritional facts as well.

• Shopping Pro. This adds an edge of organization to your basic apps, allowing the exceptionally organized to import/export their lists to their PC for storage and tracking.

• ShopWell. This helps you meet your dietary requirements by scanning the barcodes to find out if the item you are purchasing is a match for your diet. It sorts out organic, vegan, gluten, lactose, and other allergies to help you avoid the wrong products.

• Smart shopping list. This offers the ability to use multiple lists, set budgets, set aisles, and arrange for notifications for when you are out.

Grocery shopping is unavoidable if you have any desire to eat or feed your family. These apps will help you to get the food in your house, but what are some apps to help get the food on the table?

• Big Oven. This inspires you with a library of over 35,000 recipes, including access to grocery lists, social media, and a weekly organizer.

• Food Network. This app brings the kitchens of the food network into your home. Inspiring you with the recipes of your favorite TV chefs, the app includes videos, photos, and how to’s for your favorite recipes. You can add your own notes, create grocery lists, and create custom searches for ingredients or chefs.

• Yummly. This sets itself apart by having the most powerful search engine of the bunch. You can itemize your search based on a variety of criteria. Want vegan lasagna, need gluten free recipes, or desire low cal desserts? Yummly’s going to help you find a recipe that matches your need.

• Allrecipes. A community-based app providing a social feel. With the app on, you can walk into a grocery store and receive notifications for recipes based on what’s on sale. Allrecipes allows you to build lists, save favorites, and filter and search for favorites.

• Epicurious. The granddaddy of cooking apps. Member based commentary allows you to see favorite recipes that are tested and confirmed. Epicurious is a beautiful and easy app to use with built-in list management and voice activated controls.

These apps are just a few of the many available apps designed to help you find and cook great meals. Take the time to get to know them and how each can help you to be more efficient and frugal in your shopping and cooking. So go ahead and use that device for something besides Candy Crushing and maybe make some real candy instead.