How to Create a Diet or Nutrition Mobile Application in 2024

It’s difficult to deny that healthy lifestyle and nutrition are global trends now. Moreover, it doesn’t seem like a short-term craze since every year the popularity of nutrition applications, diet plans, and healthy recipes is only growing.

About 97% of Americans say that healthy eating is very (72%) or somewhat (25%) important”. - Pew Research Center

Many Startups try to catch this wave and find their niche in this growing market. I bet my avocado toast on the fact that you are one of them! If so, keep reading this article since we’re going to share useful insights on how to create a diet app MVP for your Startup!

📚 Diet and Nutrition Market Overview

In 2024, the market for diet and nutrition tracking app development, a key segment of the fitness industry, is experiencing significant growth and transformation. Projected to generate USD 5.40 billion in revenue, with an annual growth rate of 11.31%, this market is expected to expand to USD 8.29 billion by 2028 (Statista). There's a noticeable uptick in user engagement, with market penetration projected to rise from 4.40% in 2024 to 5.15% by 2028.

Key trends in diet planner application development include:

• The demand for personalized nutrition plans.
• The integration of Artificial Intelligence technology for customized dietary recommendations.
• The incorporation of social networking features in apps to enhance community engagement and support.

Factors such as increased disposable incomes, heightened health awareness, and the ubiquity of smartphones are propelling this market forward.

For developers and entrepreneurial firms aiming to venture into diet planner app development or looking to build a yoga application, understanding these market dynamics and consumer preferences is crucial for offering effective services that contribute to the improvement of user experience. To succeed in developing a diet or nutrition app, we recommended to focus on delivering personalized, technologically advanced solutions that meet the evolving needs of health-conscious users.

📌 Diet and Nutrition App Types

There are numerous applications that provide nutrition information, including specialized pregnancy nutrition apps. Let's consider types of nutrition to better understand the variety of available solutions and choose the best option for your needs.

Calorie Counting Apps

For tracking calorie intake and fitness data, calorie counter apps like Lose It and Lifesum are available. They not only help users monitor their diet by counting calories but also offer insights into the nutritional value of different foods (carbs, proteins, fats, etc.) based on their ingredient composition. For instance, Fatsecret provides autocomplete entries, product code scanning, and even product recognition through photos. It also creates graphs to compare nutrient and calorie consumption at different times.

All-in-One Nutrition Apps

MyFitnessPal exemplifies how to develop a diet app that combines all the features mentioned above, making it an ideal choice for fitness enthusiasts. It provides fitness and nutrition planning, records important nutritional statistics, generates active reports, establishes personal goals, calculates the nutritional value of meals, and supports both metric and imperial measurements.

📱 Key Nutrition App Features: Make a Backbone of Your MVP

For a nutrition app developer, one of the most challenging parts of mobile health app development, particularly when you build a diet and nutrition app, is choosing the right scope of features for your application:

• On the one hand, if you omit some essential features and your mobile Product lacks some functionality, it will probably neither meet users’ expectations nor solve their problems.
• On the other hand, if you make your app too complicated and spend a lot of resources and time on development, it may not work out well since it’s a lot better to get a PoC and secure funding prior to adding some advanced functionality.

Сonsidering all of the above, we decided to split the features of diet and nutrition app development into 2 categories: ones that fit the MVP-Scope and ones that can be implemented after you pitch your Project to investors and get resources for further scaling.

🔝 8 Extra Features For Your Nutrition Application

So, the features above make up the backbone of your diet app. This means that you should definitely include them in the scope of nutrition app development.

However, we’ve also listed some features that can help you define your USP and which may be added later when you scale your product. Let’s take a closer look!

# 1: Diet Plans 🗂

Many users expect your app to assist in diet planning, acting as a 'healthy eating helper' rather than just a calorie calculator. Therefore, as we mentioned, it may be a great advantage from their perspective if you offer them a more personalized experience (e.g. if they need to lose weight or to build some muscle mass, etc.).

⚙️ Tech Stack

We at Stormotion can recommend using the following tech tools to build a nutrition app:

• You will definitely need to integrate some Food Products & Ingredients Database. For example, it may be INRFood, USDA Food Composition Databases, MyNetDiary, CalorieKing or any other you’d like. If you aren’t sure which one fits your Product best, get in touch with us and we’ll help you to make the right choice.
• Pay special attention to the Edamam Dev Platform. It provides a bunch of APIs for different cases, including food database, recipe search, meal recommendation engine and a few others.
• Calorie Mama API enables instant food recognition via devices’ cameras.
• In case you’re thinking about integrating wearable devices, Fitbit, Jawbone Up, Garmin, Nike+, Misfit SDKs and APIs are essential (depending on what manufacturer you choose).
• If you don’t plan to integrate wearables, you can still get info about users’ daily activity (including walking distance and burned calories). You can use Google Fit (for Android) and Apple HealthKit (for iOS).
• For sending push notifications, you can use OneSignal or Pusher.
• Payment Gateway can be enabled using Braintree or Stripe.

💰 Monetization Strategy

In today’s world of diet and nutrition apps, where competition is stiff, it takes a smart monetization strategy to ensure financial viability. Although generating revenue can be done in numerous ways, the best methods to make money are through in-app advertisements, paid downloads, and consideration of a freemium model. Most often, these monetizing strategies are used in combination and lead to higher revenue streams. Here's a closer look at each approach:

• In-App Advertising: In-app advertising is a revenue generator that one earns every time a user views or clicks on an ad within the app. MyFitnessPal and Fooducate are typical apps that use multiple ad formats such as video, native, banner, and interstitial ads. Ads should be placed in a manner that minimizes interference with the user experience to avoid user frustration.
• Paid Downloads: One of the direct monetization approaches is charging users to download an app. It is lucrative but complicated due to countless free alternatives. Your app should have outstanding features, design, and user-friendliness to succeed. Initially, My Diet Coach-Pro used this model, but over time, they switched to a subscription-based approach, offering the app for free.
• Freemium Model: The freemium model is popular among leading nutrition apps because it provides basic app functionality without cost and advanced features at a premium. This approach enables customers to test the app and recognize its worth before paying for additional resources. Such apps include MyFitnessPal and Fooducate which in their premium versions provide advanced features, plus ad-free operation.

📖 Diet or Nutrition App Development Steps

Market Analysis and Planning

Understanding the market environment is critical. The health and fitness app engagement rate has sustained a considerable rise, suggesting an emerging trend. Key demographics and user goals, such as tracking physical activity or controlling eating habits, need to be identified.

Defining the App Type

Choose the app's category, which could be a calorie counter, diet planner, social network for health enthusiasts, or a specific dieting application. This choice will direct the app’s features and target audience. Carefully consider how you will monetize your application. Utilize monetization models such as subscription plans, in-app purchases, or premium content, and highly effective targeted advertisements to generate revenue.

Feature Selection

A successful nutrition mobile app should include essential features such as user registration, goal setting, a user-friendly dashboard, integration with wearables, and a comprehensive food library, as well as information on various popular diets, such as the Paleo diet. The app can be made even more advanced with things like barcode scanners and live consultations by nutritionists.

Design and Development

Invest in UI/UX design that is based on user needs and findings from market research. Features and target audience should guide the development process. For front-end development, one can leverage technologies such as Java, Swift or React with back-end support from Python or Node.js.

As a software development company, we recommend hiring a cross-platform approach using React Native for simultaneous iOS and Android development. The choice of technology stack is crucial. It needs to incorporate a suite of modern, scalable technologies that facilitate the seamless integration of wearables and other IoT devices.

Quality Assurance and Testing

Thorough testing, with close attention to eliminating bugs and ensuring that the app functions properly, is a necessity, involving QA engineers.

Launch and Maintenance

After development and testing, the app is rolled out on platforms such as Apple Store and Google Play. Continuous maintenance is necessary to update the app and retain users.

💰 Cost to Build a Diet App

Here are our estimates of the costs of creating a diet app. Check it out:

So the diet and nutrition tracking mobile app development costs are between $54-70,000. We calculated the costs to create a diet app using the $50/hour rate that is standard for Eastern Europe. However, this is an approximate estimate so if you want to get an accurate numbers for your project, drop us a line!

📚 Our Experience

Stormotion company has had the opportunity to work on a diet and nutrition app - Foodnav, and would like to gladly share our experience with you.

Foodnav is a Hamburg-based startup that has developed a database aimed at helping people make informed choices about their food, particularly those with dietary restrictions, vegetarians, vegans, and anyone interested in conscious eating.

Foodnav targets not only individuals with food intolerances but also vegans, vegetarians, allergies and anyone interested in a healthy diet. The app, set to launch in mid-year, will allow users to store their individual dietary profiles and scan product barcodes to see if they align with their profiles. The app promises high reliability in its recommendations.

The app provides additional information on ingredients from various sources, including explanations of why certain products may not be vegan. They also collect statements from associations and organizations about specific ingredients or products and include test reports.

The database is updated nightly, ensuring timeliness and reliability. Foodnav uses reliable data sources like ecoinform and plans to integrate data from 1WorldSync to cover a significant portion of the German food market.

💡 Conclusion

Now you know everything you need to make your own nutrition application. This market is booming right now, so you have all the chances to find your customer and occupy a prosperous niche.

The Stormotion Team would recommend you to follow the scenario below to succeed:

1. Start with defining the core elements of your Mobile Project: who are the users, what is their diet/nutrition problem, and what solution will your product offer them. Don’t forget about your monetization model and USPs, as there’s a lot of competition.
2. Find a reliable Dev Agency that will be your contractor and tech partner for the time being. Let them prepare an Estimate & a Roadmap and pick up the right Tech Stack. Then you’ll have a clearer picture of your Idea’s Time-To-Market - approximate costs and deadlines are quite predictable.
3. Create a Diet App MVP with your Agency and check whether it solves the pain of your TA. Iterate until you find a Product-Market fit.
4. Pitch your working Product to investors, secure funding and scale your application further!

We at Stormotion are ready to help with developing a Diet App. Drop us a line by hitting the button below and together we’ll build the next big FoodTech-Unicorn!