Carrot’s new calorie counting app wants to insult you into losing weight

You might have heard of Carrot before; the company’s known for its app that tries to insult you into going for a run.

Today the company has released its newest app, Carrot Hunger, which is a fun spin on the ever-troublesome task of getting you to count your calories.

As you set up Carrot Hunger, it’ll call you endearing terms like “meat bag” and “carcass” to make you feel bad about your weight in order to provide motivation.

To set up the app, it’ll ask questions like your height, weight and gender. When Carrot is asking your gender, you can choose squirrel if you wish (unfortunately, I am apparently not cute enough to be a squirrel). As you answer the questions, the insults change accordingly.

The app uses this data, like other calorie counters, to generate your limit for the day. Since I’m in New Zealand, Carrot automatically adjusts for Kilojoules instead, which is what we use here to measure Calories.

You’re able to enter food by searching the extensive database, which makes it easy to add what you’ve eaten.

Each time you add something, the screen fills up toward the top to indicate how much you’ve eaten toward your limit and the app generates a fresh insult (and makes your avatar larger) to make you feel bad for that giant Eggs Benedict you just had.

When you start going overboard is where Carrot’s new app shines; if you significantly blow out your calorie limit for the day, the app will accept a bribe of an in-app purchase to pretend it never happened. If you decline, you’re shown more ads as punishment.

This is Carrot’s unique monetization strategy, apparently, as it can guilt you into paying cash for your gluttony. Brian Mueller, Carrot’s maker, also pointed out that the app shows you funny ads you’d actually want to see.

When I was using Carrot, I got an advertisement for “free fries” (pictured above) and when I clicked, was mocked about caving in. There are normal advertisements too, but the fake ads made it a little more bearable.

If you’re the kind of person who could do with some light-hearted mocking from an app, Carrot is a great way to track your calorie intake.

Carrot Hunger is free, with ads and in-app purchases, so there’s no harm in seeing if it works for you.

➤ Carrot Hunger [iOS]