What is this study about?
It is critical to understand the make up of a person's diet to know more about their current health status and to make recommended changes that could improve their diets and health. Nutrition scientists use controlled feeding studies, to understand the effect of diet on human health, but these studies are extremely expensive to conduct. An alternative approach is to use large observational studies that rely on individuals to report what they eat in detailed diet records, but these methods are extremely burdensome for individuals to complete and they also contain substantial biases and errors. New artificial intelligence assisted methods that help individuals to capture diet in real-time are needed to reduce these biases. Imagine the ease of knowing exactly how many calories and other nutrients are in a meal with just a snapshot taken from a smart phone?
The purpose of the SNAPMe Study is to develop a method that uses photography to accurately calculate the amount of nutrients in meals that are consumed by healthy participants, thereby replacing the use of electronic food records.