Be Food Smart builds on Public Health England’s sugar tracking app last year. The latter was a runaway success with more than two million downloads.
It works in a similar way, showing the amount of sugar, fat and salt as cartoon renderings of a sugar cube, fat globule and salt packet.
Users can scan food or drink to see how healthy the item is. The app makes use of food "traffic light" labelling to signal whether the item is high, medium or low in each ingredient.
The app can currently scan 114,000 products, using data from Broadbank and FoodSwitch, plus information from manufacturers and retailers.
The £6.3m campaign is supported by outdoor ads, social media, experiential events in school and app install ads.
Dogfish built the Be Food Smart app, with M&C Saatchi handling creative and MEC handling media. Freud Communications is handling PR.
On 28 December, Public Health England launched One You, aimed to encourage healthy habits in middle-aged Britons, followed on 30 December by a campaign warning of the dangers of smoking.
This story originally appeared on PRWeek sister title Campaign
