Paleo Diet Free app review: a cookbook for Paleo athletes

Introduction

Paleo Diet Free by FitKit, LLC is a cookbook app made especially for those who follow a Paleo diet. The iTunes description page says it’s for athletes but anyone can make and eat these dishes! If you’re looking for a basic recipe app with no ingredients like grains, processed foods, or sugar, then look no further.

The Main Dish

The Paleo diet is one that that is gaining momentum. People have been quietly eating this way for years – mostly those with gluten intolerances, Celiac disease, or other medical diagnoses, but more and more people are choosing to live a Paleo lifestyle these days. If you’re firmly entrenched in the Paleo life or are just starting out, this is a decent recipe app to give you some meal ideas.

The caveat here is that the ads are seriously annoying and you’re constantly harassed to upgrade to the pro version for $0.99. If you can ignore all that for the sake of some pretty good recipes, then read on!

There aren’t any categories or any type of organization to the recipes aside from being in alphabetical order (unless you use the filter tool).There are only 12 recipes, though, so it’s not a big deal. You get some main dish recipes, a breakfast recipe, and a couple side dish recipes. A few of the recipes are Baby Beet and Peach Salad, Antipasto Chopped Chicken Salad, and Portobello burger.

 

You can star the recipes you particularly like or use a lot.

Regarding the filter tool, if you pull down the little arrow near the center top of the page, you get a basic method to filter the recipes by meal type (Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, or Snack), by Prep Time, or whether you have it starred or not.

Each recipe has three tabs: Details, Ingredients, and Preparation. The Details page has a nice photo of the prepared dish, how long it takes to make, and how many servings each recipe will provide. This section also has a personal commentary and other information you might find useful. This was a nice touch, and something a lot of recipe apps don’t have.

The Ingredients tab is really basic, just a list of ingredients you’ll need. The Preparation tab is the same; there are no frills here. There are no step-by-step photos or videos; all you get is a big block of black text on a wood grain cutting board background. They should have broken up the text into paragraphs for easier reading and following along, but other than that, there’s nothing terrible about the Preparation page.

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Simple Paleo cookbook with basic recipes for beginners and advanced cooks alike
• Easy to navigate
• Free sample of the Pro version

 

Cons

• You only get 12 recipes
• The ads are annoying
• Constant requests to upgrade to the paid app
• The Preparation page should be broken up into smaller blocks of text

Last Course

Overall, this is an average app. It gives you a great little taste of what you’ll get with the Pro version, so you can try out a few of the recipes you’ll get before you drop a buck on the full version.

The interface, while simple, is easy to navigate. The recipes themselves are easy to follow, although it would be nice if there were more photos or links to videos for those people who are just learning to cook.