Health and proper nutrition are important for everyone – whether or not a person has a disability. However, planning, organizing, and shopping for the food that make us the healthiest can be a challenge for people with some disabilities. Intellectual challenges may make it difficult to understand which recipes are most healthy and which groceries need to be purchased to make those dishes. Physical challenges might make grocery shopping difficult or even impossible. Communication challenges might make articulating meal plans and grocery lists difficult for caregivers.
Paprika Recipe Manager
The Paprika Recipe Manager is an electronic meal planner, recipe index and grocery list management system that works on nearly every modern computer
and mobile platform (iPhone, iPad, Mac, Windows, Android, Kindle Fire, and Nook Color). It allows the user to research recipes independently or work with a caregiver or healthcare provider to identify recipes that fit within the required dietary plan. Once recipes are selected, categorized, and even favorited within the Paprika computer application, they can be copied onto a calendar of meal plans, and used to generate a shopping list that is readily available on the mobile device of the user, or even shared with a caregiver or family member who might be assisting with grocery shopping.
Collecting recipes:
The Paprika system includes a built-in browser that easily lets the user search recipes on popular recipe sites such as: About.com, AllRecipes, Cooking.com, Pinterest, Recipe.com, New York Times, Pioneer Woman, Washington Post, and more. In fact, although some recipes can be imported into the Paprika system with a single click, any recipe can be added manually by the user. This allows the user to integrate family favorites as well as healthy choices from anywhere on the Internet. Once recipes are integrated into Paprika, they can be categorized into Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, Snacks, Vegetarian, Healthy, or any other category that helps the user to better select recipes for their meal plan.
Meal Planning:
Paprika includes a meal planning calendar that allows the user to simply drag recipes from the recipe collection onto any day of the week. This allows the user to better include various dietary choices and to plan around events such as meals that need to be portable, dinner guests, meals for special occasions, or simply the optimal utilization of left-overs following larger meals. The meal planner includes the recipes along with imported photos of the food to help the user better visualize what the menu might look like for a particular meal. Recipes included in a meal plan can be exported into a grocery shopping list that is available on the mobile platform, arranged by the aisles in the store.
Grocery Shopping:
Whether or not you use the recipe index and meal planning functions of Paprika, the Paprika app makes a great shared grocery shopping list. Items can be added to the grocery shopping list by the primary user or by family members. In fact, the primary user can share the Paprika login credentials with anyone who might be involved in meal planning and grocery shopping tasks. As groceries are purchased, the person doing the grocery shopping can check items off. The Paprika cloud service almost instantly updates the lists on all connected devices which allows everyone involved to see what has been purchased. This even works across mobile devices so that family members can be shopping in separate areas of the store and see what has been checked off the list by others using the same Paprika system. This also allows a user who might be at home to add last-minute items to the shopping list and have those items instantly appear on the smart phone of the person doing the shopping.
Cost:
The Paprika app is sold as a collection of components. You only need to own one of the components to get started. If you purchase more than one component (for example the Mac version and the iPhone version) you can connect them with the free cloud based system at no additional cost. Adding additional components simply adds more devices (and presumably more people) who can share in your Paprika system. iPhone/iPad: $4.99, Mac: $19.99, Windows: $19.99, Android: $4.99, Kindle Fire: $4.99, Nook Color: $4.99
Accessibility:
Although this system has some compatibility issues with screen readers used by individuals who are blind or visually impaired, some basic testing with VoiceOver on the iPhone reveals that it usable with some minor tweaks. AppleVis has a review of this app and provides more details on using it on the iPhone.
In summary, although the Paprika Recipe Manager system was not designed as an assistive technology application, but there are certainly a great number of situations in which people with disabilities can benefit from having a centralized system for tracking their food needs and associated shopping tasks. It is easy to use, intuitive, and includes just the right collection of tools to assist people with many types of disabilities in better organizing their meal planning, recipes, and grocery shopping tasks.
Learn more at: www.paprikaapp.com
