Feast App Launches To Bring Mindfulness To Food Tracking

LOS ANGELES, July 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Feast, a community of food lovers, announced today the launch of their mindful eating app that turns the drudgery of calorie counting into a fun, easy, and simple experience. Download the Feast App for free today on the App Store.

Feast was built in response to a major problem with 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, to the point where the apps themselves become a hurdle.

"People should stop obsessing over calories and pay more attention to the actual foods they're eating," said 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." 

Feast looks and works differently than existing food trackers. Instead of frustrating users with loads of numbers and data, Feast asks you to simply take a picture of what's on your plate which is something many people already do for fun and social media. Pausing for a moment to take a photo of your meal will also give you that extra boost of willpower to say no to choices you might regret. 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. This growing mindfulness will naturally nudge you to improve your 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 lossⁱ.

Feast is the brainchild of Jackie Kim and Brad Yim, a wife-husband team. Jackie is a serial entrepreneur who has successfully launched two direct to consumer skincare brands, Maelove and Mavericks. Brad 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," said 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." 

Feast App Features

• Integrated step counter and weight tracker: Feast works in tandem with Apple Health so you can easily see within Feast how many steps you have taken.
• Your own artificial intelligence health assistant: Our AI assistant (codename: Sid) can save you time with your journal entries by identifying the foods in your pictures. As Sid gets smarter over time, 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. 
• 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.

Pricing and Availability

The Feast app is available for download today on the Apple App store for free. Feast doesn't upcharge or require a subscription. The Android version is coming soon in 2020.

About Feast

At Feast, we believe food is nourishment for our body and soul, and eating should be a joyful experience. Feast is a free mobile app that has re-invented food tracking by ditching the drudgery of calorie counting in favor of greater mindfulness around foods. 

Feast users stay on a healthy eating journey for life by tracking what they eat with photos rather than filling out tedious calorie forms. Feast was founded in 2019 by Jackie Kim, a serial entrepreneur who successfully launched two direct-to-consumer skincare brands, Maelove and Mavericks, and Brad Yim, a former software engineer and an algorithmic hedge fund trader. Feast is headquartered in Los Angeles, California.

ⁱ Harvard Health Publishing. "Open your heart to mindful eating." Last modified July, 2018.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/heart-health/open-your-heart-to-mindful-eating.

Mayo Clinic. "Lose weight with mindful eating." Accessed July 6, 2020. https://diet.mayoclinic.org/diet/motivate/lose-weight-with-mindful-eating?xid=nl_MayoClinicDiet_20141225.

Duke University. "Tracking Food Leads to Losing Pounds." Last modified February 28, 2019. https://today.duke.edu/2019/02/tracking-food-leads-losing-pounds.

SOURCE Feast

Related Links

https://feast-app.com