Samsung has partnered with nutrition app Lifesum for its upcoming Galaxy Watch4 series.

The new smartwatch series, launching Aug. 27, will feature Lifesum as a nutrition partner, allowing users to track food and water intake, and has functions like activity monitoring, step counting and sleep analysis on the Watch4.

“As a leading nutrition partner on the Samsung Galaxy Watch4 series, Lifesum makes it easier than ever to improve how people eat by tracking your nutrition and better understanding your body,” Markus Falk, Lifesum's CEO, said in a statement.

WHY IT MATTERS 

Stockholm, Sweden-based Lifesum lets users track their meals and calories, plan their meals, and look up recipes. 

In April the company announced it had reached 50 million registered users across 250 countries and launched a Health Advisory Board to provide feedback as the app continues to update and add new features.

"The global pandemic has shone a light on the challenges of our healthcare systems globally,” Marcus Gners, Lifesum cofounder and CSO, said in a statement. “This especially became clear as we learned that many of the underlying conditions that increase the risk of severe illness from COVID-19 – obesity, Type 2 diabetes and hypertension, to name a few – are all directly related to nutrition."

THE LARGER TREND

Fitness and health-tracking wearables have gone mainstream, from a patch made by Gatorade that gives athletes data on their workouts to Fitbit’s newest tracker that looks like a piece of jewelry. 

A Pew Research Center survey conducted in 2019 found 21% of American adults reported consistently using a fitness tracker or smartwatch. 

“At Samsung, our mission is to create purposeful technology for a better world – and health is a major part of that,” says TaeJong Jay Yang, corporate SVP and head of the health team for mobile communications business at Samsung. “Wearables play an increasingly important role in how we track our health, and by collaborating with trusted partners like Lifesum we can provide even more robust health monitoring on the Galaxy Watch4 and Watch4 Classic.”

But studies have shown mixed effectiveness for apps geared towards calorie counting and weight loss. In a 2019 study on 60 Indian adults published in the Health Informatics Journal, researchers found a limited effect on weight or dietary patterns, largely because of incorrect or limited nutrition guidance. The study noted that 30% of the apps studied suggested unsafe weight loss goals.

A review of nutrition app studies published in Obesity Reviews found that apps generally improved nutrition and related health outcomes like blood lipids and blood pressure. Researchers suggested the apps are a cost-effective way to improve nutrition, but long-term follow-up studies were small.