Bite Balance wins Rep. Betty McCollum’s 2025 Congressional App Challenge in Minnesota’s Fourth District

When asked what inspired the creation of Bite Balance, Riddhi Singhvi said, “The pursuit of health has never been more important to the public, with 82% of U.S. adults saying that wellness is their top priority. This widespread priority has fueled a significant growth in the Wellness Industry, now valued at $1.5 trillion (McKinsey and Company, 2024). Yet, this growth has not translated into effective wellness applications out there are truly meet the needs of the public, with a recent study showing 70% of users quit in the first 100 days of app usage, citing time costs and evolving user needs and goals that were not met by the apps they used (National Library of Medicine, 2024). This critical gap between user priority and app functionality needed to be addressed.

“The first major failing of these apps lies in user experience. They rely on the outdated, tedious model of manual logging and meticulous calorie counting. This process is not streamlined; it requires frustrating data entry, constant searching through expansive databases, and difficult estimations of portion sizes. This cognitive burden quickly leads to fatigue, inaccuracy, and ultimately, but not surprisingly, high user abandonment. Even AI systems in use today fail, relying on data not trained for mixed or culturally diverse meals, leading to inaccurate nutritional estimations that place more burden on the user instead of resolving this major issue.

“Secondly, there is a profound ethical failure in the design of these apps. 73.1% of health-tracking app users said that their apps were a contributor to their eating disorder symptoms (Duke University School of Medicine, 2023). By insisting on the precise quantification of every single input, these apps inadvertently foster a culture of obsession and shame, which is not compatible with long-term beneficial habit-forming change.

“There is a powerful and urgent need for innovation to move beyond this restrictive, calorie-focused status quo. The challenge is to create a platform that replaces obsessive and potentially harmful tracking with mindful awareness. Our app is designed to meet this challenge head-on by leveraging AI to instantly analyze and simplify nutritional inputs, shifting the user’s focus from counting to actionable insights. By streamlining the input process and emphasizing quality of meals over strict restriction, we can deliver a wellness tool that is not only highly accurate but, most importantly, psychologically safe and truly helps our users reach a better understanding of their gut health.”