MyRealFood is the winning project in the Business category of the 2019 UPF Emprèn awards, which were delivered in July 2019, convened by the Pompeu Fabra University Board of Trustees. This category of the award is complemented by the Idea category, and both are endowed with 10,000 euros.

It is a mobile application that is intended to democratize healthy nutrition and help people improve their health. It functions include a scanner to classify and provide information about food products, nutritional plans with a record and monitoring of meals to achieve health goals, and also access to a community of realfooders and healthy recipes.

Despite only recently being brought to market, this UPF startup now has more than 1.4 million users, more than 60,000 healthy recipes, and the scanner has been used over 100 million times.

Sofía Belenguer Hernández, a graduate in Law from UPF and master’s degree in Professional Legal Practice from the BSM-UPF, together with Toni Mancha Gudiño, a graduate in Law from the University of Barcelona and (like Sofía) a master’s degree in Professional Legal Practice from the BSM-UPF, are the two UPF alumni who founded the startup. They were later joined by Carlos Ríos Quirce, a graduate in Human Nutrition and Dietetics from the Pablo Olavide University of Sevilla, and David Vicente Campos, an Engineering graduate in Industrial Electronics and Automation and in Computer Engineering and a master’s degree in Computer Engineering from the University of León.

In addition to the UPF Emprèn award, some months later, the project was awarded overall third prize at the 2019 edition of the Explorer-Jóvenes con ideas (youth with ideas) programme, organized by Banco Santander, and endowed with 10,000 euros. It was eligible to apply for this award after MyRealFood was considered the best idea at the local final of the Explorer programme at UPF (2018-2019 academic year), whose prize was a trip to Silicon Valley (USA).

We are interviewing Sofía Belenguer, cofounder of MyRealFood, who is responsible for the management and strategy of the company.

—What is your appraisal of the prize and how will you allocate the money?

We are really excited by the award, as ex-UPF students now receiving an award as entrepreneurs from the same university. We have devoted the funds to growing as a team, which we have achieved, since these last months we have increased personnel in the lines of engineering and nutrition.

—Is society (individuals and manufacturers themselves) becoming increasingly aware of the importance of healthy eating?

In recent years there has been a change in consumer behaviour; consumers are increasingly concerned about being informed about what they are eating and keeping a healthy diet, and reducing their consumption of ultraprocessed foods. This change in the consumer means that many companies want to adapt to this trend and are reformulating their products and improving their processing.

"Covid-19 has accelerated a shift to a consumer who wants to be more informed and who supports buying local produce and shopping online". 

—Do you think covid-19 is changing eating habits? Since the pandemic began have you noticed any changes regarding the number and profiles of users?

I think that covid-19 has accelerated a shift to a consumer who wants to be more informed and who supports buying local produce and shopping online. In the case of MyRealFood, we can’t really compare numbers and profiles because the pandemic broke out just three months after launching the app to the market. In addition, we have recently made several changes to the product, but we can say that, despite the circumstances, we have continued to gain users and grow organically.

We see today that the use of made by users of the application is far more comprehensive. Before covid-19 it was more common for them to use the scanner, but during lockdown much use was made of the recipes function: users interacted with the MyRealFood community, and this behaviour is being maintained. Moreover, we are increasingly being followed on social networks (we have more than 370k followers on Instagram) where we publish content about healthy products and recipes.

—How long has the app been on the market and what do the figures indicate about the people who have used it so far?

We launched the app 14 months ago and we already have over 1.4 million users just in Spain, which is where it is available now. This growth demonstrates that there was a real need for a tool to inform consumers and help them to lead a healthier lifestyle.

—What is the profile of its main users?

Being a food app we reach many types of user. Mainly, people who want to eat healthily and have no knowledge of nutrition, but we also have well informed people, which actually helps the community to take its first steps in bringing about this change.

"There are studies that say that today an eight-year-old has already eaten as much sugar as their grandparents in 80 years".

—Despite this availability of information, approximately 25% of people in Spain are obese or overweight. Is there still a lot to do?

The problem is that we still don’t get nutritional education in schools and at the same time there are studies that say, for example, that today an eight-year-old has already eaten as much sugar as their grandparents in 80 years.

—How did you create and who participated in creating the app database?

The app product database is our own: it is the users themselves who, when they can’t find a product, send photographs of ingredients and nutritional information so it appears on the application.

"We have received interesting proposals to act as a bridge between health food consumers and health food e-commerce".

—How does online shopping, which is constantly increasing, influence the use of the application?

We have received interesting proposals to act as a bridge between health food consumers and health food e-commerce: it’s an area that we definitely must explore. It was an issue that we thought might work, but with the rapid growth of online shopping we have received more proposals.

—Do you foresee new features in the application? What plans do you have for expanding your business?

We have just redesigned the application, and we have launched a subscription version, which involves healthy eating plans and exclusive nutritional content. We are very focused on the user experience and we would like to continue making improvements in this area to help them. We are also looking into offering more information to the user about the products at the time of scanning and would like to continue growing as a team and introduce the application in other countries.