Research Outline

UK Food & Calorie Logging Mobile Apps

Goals

Identify the best mobile applications available in the United Kingdom for logging food and counting calories in order to better understand the landscape of food logging applications and the data sources these apps used to fuel user experiences.

Early Findings

Most Recommended & Downloaded Apps

  • According to various articles from UK publications, the most recommended mobile apps for food/calorie counting in the UK are as follows:
    • 1) MyFitnessPal (avg. UK user rating: 4.71, 80.13% 5 stars, 220,310 total ratings)
    • 2) Calorie Counter by MyNetDiary — (avg. UK user rating: 4.71, 80.11% 5 stars, 1,981 total ratings)
    • 3) Calorie Counter+ by MyNetDiary — (avg. UK user rating: 4.69, 81.66% 5 stars, 4,177 total ratings)
  • The most downloaded digital health apps in the UK by percentage are fitness apps (30.9%), medical reference apps (16.6%), wellness apps (15.5%), and nutrition apps (7.4%).
  • Mobile apps for diet and physical activity tracking are available to approximately 70% of the UK population.

Reasons for Top Apps

  • Deloitte indicates that the most notable features that convince users in the UK to use a health app regularly include:
    • Reassurance that the app provides trustworthy, accurate information: 69%
    • Apps that are easy to use, simple, and well-designed: 66%
    • Apps that can guarantee personal data is secure: 62%
    • Apps that are free of charge: 56%
    • Apps that do not have advertisements: 51%
    • Apps that work effectively and consistently over time: 44%
    • Apps that are inexpensive and/or provide value for money: 28%
    • Apps that permit users to network with people that are important to themselves: 26%

MyFitnessPal

  • MyFitnessPal utilizes data that is both publicly published and user-inputted to fill their food database.
  • The app also contains calorie and nutrition data on food from over 500,000 restaurants.
  • Recipes and their respective nutrition info is typically uploaded by users using the ingredients in the recipe, or website links.