Feast unveils mindful eating app that rethinks calorie counting

15 Jul 2020 --- In a bid to turn the “drudgery of calorie counting” into a fun, easy and simple experience, the Feast app has been launched to help consumers practice mindful eating. The Feast app was built to counter traditional food tracking apps, which are focused on superficial calorie counting and weight loss via deprivation. This obsession with numbers makes interacting with these apps “boring and cumbersome,” the company says. The Feast app is available for download for free and doesn’t upcharge or require a subscription. The android version is coming later this year, the company notes.

“People should stop obsessing over calories and pay more attention to the actual foods they're eating,” notes Jackie Kim, Co-Founder and CEO of Feast. “When I was trying to lose weight for my wedding, I hated how the food trackers reduced foods to numbers where the goal is to eat as little as possible to come under an artificial calorie limit. I also realized how calorie counting can worsen symptoms of eating disorders. That’s why I created Feast.” 

According to the company, Feast looks and works differently than existing food trackers. Instead of frustrating users with loads of numbers and data, Feast asks people to simply take a picture of what’s on their plate, which is something many people already do for fun and social media. 

Pausing for a moment to take a photo of the meal will also give consumers that extra boost of willpower to say no to choices they might regret, the creators note. “Feast presents your eating history in a visual way that your mind can easily process. As you look back on your eating history, you'll notice patterns that you might not have been aware of, like mindless snacking.”

Feast looks and works differently than other apps as it asks people to simply take a picture of what’s on their plate.This growing mindfulness will naturally nudge people to improve eating habits, without external pressure. Despite its simplicity, research from leading health institutions like Harvard, Mayo Clinic and Duke University support the idea that mindful eating and consistency in keeping a food journal work in weight loss, according to the company.

Feast app features include an integrated step counter and weight tracker. Feast works in tandem with Apple Health so one can easily see within Feast how many steps they have taken. In addition, it includes a personal artificial intelligence health assistant, who can save time with journal entries by identifying the foods in the pictures. Dubbed Sid, the assistant gets smarter over time, the company says. “We’ll add automated insights for individual users by analyzing eating history and incorporating other health information such as activities, heart rate, sleep pattern and weight.”

Moreover the app includes features such as: 

• Privacy mode: You can turn on privacy mode to only allow specific users or just yourself to see your journal entries.
• A picture within a picture: Option to add an inset photo to document your mood when you're about to eat.
• Connect with people and restaurants: Tag friends, topics, locations or restaurants. You can also like, comment and share other photos.
• Hashtags: Discover people and topics by searching for hashtags.
• Social: Share your photo with other social platforms such as Facebook and Instagram.

Feast is the brainchild of Jackie Kim and Brad Yim. Kim is an entrepreneur who has previously launched two direct-to-consumer skincare brands, Maelove and Mavericks. Yim built the Feast app drawing on his experience as a former software engineer and a quantitative hedge fund trader with expertise in big data and machine learning.

“We took a minimalist, visual approach that allows people to focus on the food and the experience of eating. There’s a lot of information that you can gather from visual data as our brains are wired to understand images faster than numbers,” explains Brad Yim, the CTO of Feast. 

“Our vision is to use machine learning to help Feast automatically identify foods so ultimately people won't have to enter any information about what they are eating. The app will be intelligent enough to know everything based on the picture itself. Once we have food recognition in place then we can use that information to deliver personalized dietary and health recommendations,” Yim concludes.

As consumer focus on nutrition and weight management rises, nutrition apps are pegged to proliferate with personalization being a mega trend in the space. Following the successful launch of Jumbo Foodcoach for certain sports, Dutch retailer Jumbo has released a free app that is touted as a personal nutrition coach for cyclists. Furthermore, ZOE is set to launch a test kit and app that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to develop personalized eating plans based on a person’s unique gut microbes and dietary inflammation. 

Lastly, Nutrisystem, a Tivity Health brand, has launched its new personalized weight loss plans. Recognizing that each person is unique – with different body types, individual goals, and varied food tastes – the new plans provide custom macronutrients for optimal weight loss, food recommendations based on individual favorites and tailored, simple action plans delivered via the free NuMi app.

Edited by Kristiana Lalou