New York, May 8, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Now you can do a lot more than simply eat those calorie-packed meals; you can instantly "donate" them with the new 'Give Your Calories' mobile app and help fight deadly hunger through Action Against Hunger's lifesaving global programs. With Give Your Calories, you simply take a photo of a food product or scan its barcode, and the app automatically calculates and converts those calories into dollar values, which can then be donated.
The world produces enough food to feed everyone in the world, yet nearly a billion people remain undernourished. With the Give Your Calories app, Action Against Hunger has a unique tool at its disposal to help restore malnourished children to health.
The new app offers donation levels by calorie count: $1 for items that contain fewer than 200 calories, $2 for items containing 200 to 300 calories, and a $5 donation for items that contain 300 to 400 calories. For every additional 100 calories an extra $1 is added. For example, a 330ml (12-ounce) can of Coca-Cola containing 139 calories equates to a $1 donation while a beef taco that contains 221 calories equates to a $2 donation. Users can share their contributions with their social networks and track how much has been donated by others around the world.
You can view a brief video on how the app works at www.giveyourcalories.org.
Developed by Belgian communications agency Happiness Brussels, Give Your Calories has been designed to be an evolutionary app - if it does not recognize the visual, users can add their food into an auto-suggest list which is memorized by the app, adding it to a global Give Your Calories crowd-sourced food and calorie database. The launch version of the app draws on a database of 1,000+ of the most commonly consumed meals and indulgences and is backed by a barcode and food imagery database of as many as two million items. Users will undoubtedly have many more to add especially as the use of the app spreads around the world across different cultures and different types of food. Future developments of the app could also include the integration of Google's Goggles image search functionality to further enhance the database.
Action Against Hunger's James Michaud, senior external relations officer, explains: "Happiness Brussels created this truly inspired idea for us. The app is designed to give people an easy, fun way to fight hunger on a daily basis, but it also educates users that deadly malnutrition is a predictable, preventable, and treatable condition that needlessly afflicts millions of children worldwide."
Karen Corrigan, CEO of Happiness Brussels and BLISS interactive & mobile - developers of the app, said: "Give Your Calories is more than an app. It's an innovative concept in that it aims to address both 'over-nutrition' and 'under-nutrition' at the same time, empowering individuals to help restore balance to a world where access to food is anything but balanced. It also revolutionizes the way we donate to humanitarian organisations and help people who don't have enough food on their plates. It has nothing to do with guilt. It's all about sharing what we have plenty of with those who have less, and knowing that Action Against Hunger will deliver that change."
Give Your Calories is supported by North American Power, one of the fastest growing retail energy suppliers in the U.S. Underscored by a commitment to social responsibility and the belief that small changes make a big difference, North American Power makes monthly donations to Action Against Hunger on behalf of customers to support the fight against hunger through the company's innovative Mission to Millions program.
The Give Your Calories app is downloadable from the iTunes Store. An Android version of the app will be released shortly.
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About Action Against Hunger
Action Against Hunger is an international humanitarian organization that operates in more than 40 countries. With over 30 years of expertise in contexts of conflict, natural disasters, and food crises, Action Against Hunger's 5,000+ field professionals save the lives of severely undernourished children while helping vulnerable communities become self-sufficient.
About Happiness Brussels
Happiness Brussels is an international, award-winning communications agency founded with the ethos that "Everything is Media. Everyone is Media." A tree that talks via its social networks, a car that creates its own font, a BP oil spill that has a message for the world, "Oil & Water Do Not Mix", a car that completes Google's Street View; such is the creative output of that thinking. Happiness' ideas generate significant commercial impact for their clients in line with its "Return on Idea" concept which is central to all its work.
Happiness' work has been recognised by several international juries including at Cannes, Eurobest, the Webbys, London International Awards, D&AD and Clio, including three Grand Prix for the iQ Street View and iQ Font campaigns for Toyota. Happiness currently ranks in the top 3 independent creative agencies in Europe.
About BLISS interactive & mobile
BLISS interactive & mobile was founded by Happiness Europe in 2008 and is based in Ho Chi Minh City and Antwerp. BLISS is the technological solution provider behind all interactive and mobile ideas of Happiness Brussels and other advertising agencies across Europe.