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Show HN: I built an AI that recognizes food

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Re: Show HN: I built an AI that recognizes food

#121

Post by gohrt »

tryitnow wrote: post #112
HamSession wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your suggestions for human assessment because of problem posed by food calories varying significantly due to different preparations. Take for example soda, if I gave you a picture of soda in a glass could you tell it was diet or regular? You might scoff at such an edge case but it quickly becomes more common when looking into food perpetration techniques. This is why caloric estimation is a really diffic…

How is that " the calories of a meal do not equal the sum of it's parts"? That seems to violate the laws of thermodynamics.

Cooking changes the caloric content of food. Not all of every ingredient gets all the way to the diner plate.

Biology is not thermodynamics. Humans are not perfect combustion engines.

Re: Show HN: I built an AI that recognizes food

#122

Post by gohrt »

HamSession wrote: post #108
nathan_f77 wrote: post #86

I would pay something like $5 per day for this if it was a real person who looks at my photos, categorizes them accurately, and enters them into MyFitnessPal. I won't trust an AI until it has a massive database and a million users. Until then, it's just not going to work well enough. You also need to convince users why they should use your app, instead of MyFitnessPal (which already has a massive database, including…

I agree with your suggestions for human assessment because of problem posed by food calories varying significantly due to different preparations. Take for example soda, if I gave you a picture of soda in a glass could you tell it was diet or regular? You might scoff at such an edge case but it quickly becomes more common when looking into food perpetration techniques. This is why caloric estimation is a really diffic…

> causes restaurants to not list their calories as the calories of a meal do not equal the sum of it's parts.

In my area, restaurants list the calories for each menu item, exactly to the extent required by law (chain restaurants are required to public calorie counts), plus some promotional "under 500 calories" or what-have-you for diet-targeting places.

Re: Show HN: I built an AI that recognizes food

#123

Post by alphydan »

tryitnow wrote: post #112
HamSession wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your suggestions for human assessment because of problem posed by food calories varying significantly due to different preparations. Take for example soda, if I gave you a picture of soda in a glass could you tell it was diet or regular? You might scoff at such an edge case but it quickly becomes more common when looking into food perpetration techniques. This is why caloric estimation is a really diffic…

How is that " the calories of a meal do not equal the sum of it's parts"? That seems to violate the laws of thermodynamics.

He may be talking about cooking. This could involve chemical reactions, or facilitate / slow the absorption of nutrients, therefore changing the effective caloric intake from various ingredients.

Thermodynamics should add up once you account for heating, cooling, evaporation, enzymes, waste, etc

Re: Show HN: I built an AI that recognizes food

#124

Post by subcosmos »

hokkos wrote: post #111
subcosmos wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another angle is post-consumption. Ive always wondered if precisely monitoring body temperature might tell you something about consumption, since there is this 'thermic effect of food'. Would be hard to get right though ... In the lab, we can use doubly-labelled water to precisely measure calorie intake and burn, but its so damned expensive. If only it were commercially viable.

About post-consumption could a turd-shot help to compute the calories in/out ?

That could be called hungryPOT ...

ah, good ole toilet humor

Re: Show HN: I built an AI that recognizes food

#125

Post by [deleted] »

internaut wrote: post #116
koolba wrote: post #75

Someone should combine this AI with something like Google glass (so you don't have to pull out your phone), a basic calorie/nutrition filter, and a shock bracelet[1]. That way when I look at a Krispy Kreme donut I get immediate feedback! [1]: http://pavlok.com/hello.php

I'm dying here. Sign me up for your startup. Let's call it: "American Dystopia"

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: I built an AI that recognizes food

#126

Post by holografix »

This has HUGE potential. Some of the comments here disregard the fact that AI can do a better job than humans. An expert chef looking at dishes will make an educated guess on the ingredients and quantities that went into a dish and will have a better idea of the caloric content. The AI could learn a similar skill, identifying whether a dish contains pastry, buttery sauces, fatty meat etc etc.

Re: Show HN: I built an AI that recognizes food

#127

Post by a_small_island »

nathan_f77 wrote: post #86

I would pay something like $5 per day for this if it was a real person who looks at my photos, categorizes them accurately, and enters them into MyFitnessPal. I won't trust an AI until it has a massive database and a million users. Until then, it's just not going to work well enough. You also need to convince users why they should use your app, instead of MyFitnessPal (which already has a massive database, including…

Impossible. How can someone tell whether you cooked with butter and oil, for instance?

Re: Show HN: I built an AI that recognizes food

#128

Post by subcosmos »

internaut wrote: post #116
koolba wrote: post #75

Someone should combine this AI with something like Google glass (so you don't have to pull out your phone), a basic calorie/nutrition filter, and a shock bracelet[1]. That way when I look at a Krispy Kreme donut I get immediate feedback! [1]: http://pavlok.com/hello.php

I'm dying here. Sign me up for your startup. Let's call it: "American Dystopia"

There's a trump joke in there somewhere.

Re: Show HN: I built an AI that recognizes food

#129

Post by internaut »

subcosmos wrote: post #128
internaut wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm dying here. Sign me up for your startup. Let's call it: "American Dystopia"

There's a trump joke in there somewhere.

Electrification was called "the greatest engineering achievement of the 20th Century" by the National Academy of Engineering. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrification

With today's technology we can do it again.

Re: Show HN: I built an AI that recognizes food

#130

Post by wingerlang »

a_small_island wrote: post #127
nathan_f77 wrote: post #86

I would pay something like $5 per day for this if it was a real person who looks at my photos, categorizes them accurately, and enters them into MyFitnessPal. I won't trust an AI until it has a massive database and a million users. Until then, it's just not going to work well enough. You also need to convince users why they should use your app, instead of MyFitnessPal (which already has a massive database, including…

Impossible. How can someone tell whether you cooked with butter and oil, for instance?

Sending notes with the image maybe? Combined with a clear estimate-based response it might be okay.

For me I would be ok with knowing weather the meal was in the 500 or 800 range.

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