There are lots of food and recipe apps in the App Store, but what if you are vegan? Here are four apps aimed at those that are vegan or would like to try it. There's even a 21-day diet plan.

Vegan Recipes – Meal Planner

Price: Free | By: Tu Anh | Size: 59MB | iOS: 9.3 or later

Vegan Recipes – Meal Planner is a free app that contains over 280 recipes for food and drinks that are all vegan. They are organised into Soups and Stew, Breakfast and Brunch, Main Dishes, Dessert and Drinks.

The app has great photography and you browse a photo stream of the meals and drinks, then tap to get the details when you see one you like. There are three tabs and there is a summary description, an ingredients list and the method for preparing it.

A nice feature of the app is that the ingredients for each recipe can be added to a shopping list with one tap. Often there are a lot of ingredients and the preparation instructions can be long too.

There are a lot of interesting meals and drinks to try, but the app is advertising hell. Almost every time I selected something I got a full screen advert. Even worse, some you can't quit for several seconds. Then it takes several seconds more to display the app content.

The food is great, the app interface is not.

Vegan Pocket – Is It Vegan?

Price: Free | By: Arthur Russel | Size: 30MB | iOS: 10.0 or later

Vegan Pocket is a based on a great idea – you point your phone at the barcode on a product and it tells you whether it is vegan or not. It is supposed to say on the food label, but sometimes it is not clear or it might say vegetarian when it is actually vegan.

The app could be useful when food shopping. However, I could not get it to work. The app runs, I tap scan, line up a barcode in the designated area in the camera, and... nothing.

I don't know what's wrong and the most recent reviews on the App Store also report problems.

Avoid this app until it is fixed.

21-Day Vegan Kickstart

Price: Free | By: PCRM | Size: 5MB | iOS: 9.0 or later

21-Day Vegan Kickstart provides vegan meal suggestions for 21 days and it is an excellent app and a good incentive for anyone that wants to try going vegan. Everything is laid out and you just follow the meal plans.

Each day has breakfast, lunch, a snack, dinner and sometimes dessert. There is occasionally a choice of two items, such as two snacks, two dinners, or two lunches, so there is more than just 21 days worth of recipes. You could start again and choose the alternatives the second time around.

Tap a meal or snack and there is often, but not always an attractive photo of the delicious looking item. There is a list of ingredients and this is done as a checklist, so you could use it to show which items you have or what you need to buy when shopping.

There are directions for making the meal and they range from a single sentence, such as put everything in a blender, to detailed instructions with photos.

With each meal is a Nutrition Facts display and this shows the fat, protein, carbohydrate, vitamins and so on.

This is a great app and is recommended.

Vegan Recipes: Vegetarian food recipes & videos

Price: Free | By: Phu Vang | Size: 39MB | iOS: 8.0 or later

Vegan Recipes contains five soups, four smoothies, nine pasta dishes, six salads. That isn't much and most of the recipes are either Deserts (68) or uncategorised (103). Surely they could be put into categories?

Every recipe has a photo of the finished meal and they look delicious. Tap an item and it shows a photo and two tabs, one shows a list of the ingredients you need and another describes how to prepare it.

An unusual feature in this app is the collection of videos. After choosing one of the recipes, go to the description and you can access a collection of videos of different people making it. It looks like it is listing YouTube videos and they make it more interesting. Sometimes people vary the recipe slightly, such as by omitting an ingredient like garlic for people that don't like it.

There is a menu option to sign into YouTube, but it doesn't work. Every so often a full screen ad appears, which is a bit annoying.

There are a couple of irritations, but on the whole, this is a good app that has a lot of recipes, even if they are mostly uncategorised.