Super Diet Genius app puts superfoods to work

Diet apps are a dime a dozen. And with good reason: your smartphone is the ideal mobile companion for counting calories, managing exercise, and tracking overall health.

The latest entry into this crowded field: Super Diet Genius. What separates this $3.99 app from the likes of Lose It, Calorie Tracker, and MyFitnessPal? It's all in the "super."

Specifically, Super Diet Genius puts you on a diet that relies heavily on superfoods -- stuff that packs the maximum vitamins, minerals, fiber, antioxidants, and overall nutrition goodness. (You know: not pizza. Not candy bars. Not French fries.)

Getting started with SDG is much like getting started with any other diet app: you supply details about your age, activity level, current and desired weight, and so on.

But then you're asked to choose the foods you like from lists in five categories: protein, carbs, fat, fruit, and veggies. This takes a few minutes, but I must admit it's kind of fun. (Oatmeal? Yes! Tofu? Um, no.)

From there, SDG generates a meal plan for you, rather than just leaving it to you to choose the foods you eat and enter them into the app (a task I find both tedious and difficult, as a lot of prepared dishes are borderline impossible to record).

For any given meal you can swap out an individual item, add a fruit or veggie (they're "free," apparently, just like with Weight Watchers), or refresh the entire meal to get different foods.

A tap of the Planner button takes you to the meal plans for your entire week, which is helpful for shopping, and even gives you the option of e-mailing them to yourself.

Tap Kitchen and you'll see a list of all the foods you "liked" during the initial setup. If you're out of a particular food, switch it to "off" and SDG will add it to your shopping list -- and exclude it from your meal plans until you restock. Neat.

In my history of trying to eat smarter and lose weight, I've found that I do much better when I plan my meals in advance. SDG makes that a snap while keeping me on the superfood straight and narrow. It also takes calorie counting out of the equation, which is nice.

The flipside is that the app allows you no deviation. If you sneak, say, a handful of M&M's, there's no way to add them in so you can subtract something else. Also, there's no way to record your exercise (which would help make those M&M's allowable).

Those gripes aside, Super Diet Genius might be the ideal solution for those looking to lose weight and improve their overall health, as it takes a different -- and, some would say, easier -- tack than most other apps. (Also, I like saying the name in my Wile E. Coyote voice: "Sooo-pah Diet Geeenius.")

Have you found a diet app you like better? Tell me about it in the comments. Personally, I think MyFitnessPal is the gold standard, but I'm keen to give SDG a try.