Instead of tracking your daily calorie intake, which can be more than tedious, the Calorific app simply shows you what 200 calories worth of food looks like along with the weight of the portion.

There are probably several portion sizes that will surprise you: a whole mango is more than 200 calories, and so is that iced doughnut.

However, it's not all bad. You can eat (according to the app) one whole head of cauliflower or half an avocado without going over 200 calories.

Professor Linda Tapsell, Discipline  Leader in Nutrition and Dietetics at the University of Wollongong, says this type of food visualisation can be very helpful for most people.

"If people were just more aware of what calories are in their food it is a good thing," says Professor Tapsell.

"I think a lot of the problems with our over consumption of calories is that we're not very food literate, we're not very aware of what's in food."

While Professor Tapsell has not seen the Calorific app, she says having simple visuals to show you how much food is in a portion is a useful tool.

"There's so much information you can read about it and we're not sure how much information you can take in, so I think anything like that could be helpful."

Depending on dietary needs, the average adult should eat roughly 2000 calories a day, which means Calorific's 200-calorie portions are about 10 per cent of your daily intake.

While 10 per cent of your daily intake might not sound like much, Professor Tapsell warns to be cautious.

"200 calories is roughly 10 per cent of what you need for a day, so you can have 10 of those. At first thought it doesn't seem like that much, but if you actually looked at everything you ate during the day it can come out as more," she said.

It's like credit card purchases: you might justify several purchases because they're all small,  the shoes were on sale you say,  but when you get your bill at the end of the month it can often be a nasty surprise.

"The issue is thinking about 10 per cent as nothing; it all adds up. So treat 200 calories as just as significant as 1000."

Professor Tapsell says becoming overweight is more to do with a lack of conscious understanding about what we're putting in our mouths, rather than deciding to eat too much to start with.

"Being overweight is not likely the result of a conscious decision to overeat, but rather a lack of priority given to learning about foods and beverages.  Making sure we can recognise their relative calorie value is a great start."

A small study from earlier this year showed that being 'calorie aware' was a more effective tool than altering the size and frequency of meals, so this new app (among others with similar visualisations) could be on to the right thing.

Professor Tapsell has a similar sentiment, and says we could all do with a greater awareness of what we're eating and drinking.

"With so much food around, it's better to engage and not be too passive about what we consume."