Making Eating Count: A Qualitative Case Study of Dietary Self-Tracking through Boohee
(2026) MKVM13 20261Media and Communication Studies
Department of Communication and Media
- Abstract
- Food can be transformed into data, but it is never only data. This thesis takes the Chinese health and weight management app Boohee as a case study to examine the tension behind its dietary tracking functionality. Rather than evaluating Boohee’ s effectiveness as a health technology, this study frames it as a digital media environment that enables users to record, compare, and self-evaluate dietary behaviors. The aim is to investigate how Chinese women use Boohee in relation to everyday eating, family meals, and gendered body self-management.
The study is based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with ten Chinese women who have used Boohee before. Through thematic analysis, the thesis explores how app-based
dietary-tracking... (More) - Food can be transformed into data, but it is never only data. This thesis takes the Chinese health and weight management app Boohee as a case study to examine the tension behind its dietary tracking functionality. Rather than evaluating Boohee’ s effectiveness as a health technology, this study frames it as a digital media environment that enables users to record, compare, and self-evaluate dietary behaviors. The aim is to investigate how Chinese women use Boohee in relation to everyday eating, family meals, and gendered body self-management.
The study is based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with ten Chinese women who have used Boohee before. Through thematic analysis, the thesis explores how app-based
dietary-tracking reorganises eating across three connected levels. First, Boohee turns food intake into data, however, this process still relies on users’ memory, estimation, interpretation and emotional management. Second, family meals expose the limits of individualized dietary tracking. In shared eating contexts, users may hide, delay, or adjust their tracking practices in order to make them compatible with the relational order of family meals. Third, dietary tracking becomes gendered when Boohee’s individualized logic intersects with expectations of bodily discipline and family food responsibility. Women may be expected to manage their bodies as ongoing projects of selfimprovement. At the same time, they are also expected to participate appropriately in shared meals and, in some cases, to feed or coordinate the needs of others.
The thesis argues that Boohee not only supports diet self-tracking. Its numerical logic hides the deep meaning of diet, simplifying socially organised diet practices to personal intake, excess, self-discipline and correction. Family meals, shared dishes, intergenerational care and gendered dietary responsibility all affect the content and way users eat, but the app returns these contextualised dietary practices to female users as personal responsibility. This study shifts the focus from whether food tracking applications are effective to how users experience, negotiate and resist these apps in daily relationships, thus contributing to media and communication research in the fields of digital health, self-tracking and daily media practices. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9229480
- author
- Jiang, Xinyu LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- MKVM13 20261
- year
- 2026
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Boohee, digital health, self-tracking, dietary tracking, family meals, commensality, gender, healthism, postfeminism, China
- language
- English
- id
- 9229480
- date added to LUP
- 2026-06-05 15:40:46
- date last changed
- 2026-06-05 15:40:46
@misc{9229480,
abstract = {{Food can be transformed into data, but it is never only data. This thesis takes the Chinese health and weight management app Boohee as a case study to examine the tension behind its dietary tracking functionality. Rather than evaluating Boohee’ s effectiveness as a health technology, this study frames it as a digital media environment that enables users to record, compare, and self-evaluate dietary behaviors. The aim is to investigate how Chinese women use Boohee in relation to everyday eating, family meals, and gendered body self-management.
The study is based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with ten Chinese women who have used Boohee before. Through thematic analysis, the thesis explores how app-based
dietary-tracking reorganises eating across three connected levels. First, Boohee turns food intake into data, however, this process still relies on users’ memory, estimation, interpretation and emotional management. Second, family meals expose the limits of individualized dietary tracking. In shared eating contexts, users may hide, delay, or adjust their tracking practices in order to make them compatible with the relational order of family meals. Third, dietary tracking becomes gendered when Boohee’s individualized logic intersects with expectations of bodily discipline and family food responsibility. Women may be expected to manage their bodies as ongoing projects of selfimprovement. At the same time, they are also expected to participate appropriately in shared meals and, in some cases, to feed or coordinate the needs of others.
The thesis argues that Boohee not only supports diet self-tracking. Its numerical logic hides the deep meaning of diet, simplifying socially organised diet practices to personal intake, excess, self-discipline and correction. Family meals, shared dishes, intergenerational care and gendered dietary responsibility all affect the content and way users eat, but the app returns these contextualised dietary practices to female users as personal responsibility. This study shifts the focus from whether food tracking applications are effective to how users experience, negotiate and resist these apps in daily relationships, thus contributing to media and communication research in the fields of digital health, self-tracking and daily media practices.}},
author = {{Jiang, Xinyu}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Making Eating Count: A Qualitative Case Study of Dietary Self-Tracking through Boohee}},
year = {{2026}},
}