Action Against Hunger has launched an app, Give Your Calories, with a unique approach to driving donations.

The app, developed by agency Happiness Brussels, enables the user to take a photo of a food product or scan its barcode in order to find out its calorie content – and then converts the calories into monetary values, which can be donated via PayPal.

The launch version of the app draws on a database of over 1,000 food and drink products, and is backed up with a barcode and food imagery database covering 2m items. If an item isnt included in either of these, the user can add it to an auto-suggest list, helping Give Your Calories to build a crowdsourced food and calorie database. 

“The app is designed to give people an easy, fun way to fight hunger on a daily basis,” said Action Against Hunger senior external relations officer James Michaud. “But it also educates users that deadly malnutrition is a predictable, preventable, and treatable condition that needlessly afflicts millions of children worldwide.”