Overview
Nutribu followed the Foodsecret project, born when the founder wanted to pivot from food retail to software. We extracted the nutritional API, database, USDA importer, and user nutrition application into a full developer API that could be used by any app needing nutrition and CPG data — a vertical PaaS for the nutrition space.
The Nutribu App
Powered by the Nutribu API, we built a MyFitnessPal alternative that combined the trend of social food photography — the kind of sharing happening on Instagram and Facebook — with a novel graphical overlay of nutrition data. Every food photo was enriched with a visual breakdown of its nutritional content, calculated through a combination of food item detection, user ingredient selection, and OCR for scanning recipes and converting them into nutrition breakdowns.
Users could track what they ate, manage their nutrition, and work toward their goals through a fun, social experience that made healthy eating feel shareable rather than clinical.
Launch & Traction
Launched at the Launch Festival in San Francisco, the app grew to over 50,000 users. That traction validated the approach and led to further broadening the value proposition into wider health areas — ultimately evolving into the Nuwe health platform.
What We Built
- Nutribu API — full developer API for nutrition and CPG data, extracted from Foodsecret
- USDA data importer and nutritional database
- Food item detection and ingredient selection
- OCR recipe scanning with automatic nutrition breakdown conversion
- Social nutrition tracking app with graphical nutrition overlays
- 50,000+ users after Launch Festival SF debut
- Foundation for the broader Nuwe health platform