The use of computer vision for nutrition tracking can help monitor calorie intake, which can assist people in weight loss and keep a check on other health-related issues.
Whether you’ve eaten a bit too much at Thanksgiving or had a cheat day, such small negligence can have a severe impact on your health, if you’ve been advised a strict diet by your nutritionist. Diseases such as diabetes and obesity, too, are closely related to eating habits. Obesity affects more than one-third of the adult population in the United States. The medical cost of obesity was a staggering USD 147 billion. Keeping track of the food intake of such individuals, thus, becomes an absolute necessity. This is where technologies like computer vision prove to be extremely useful. By using computer vision for nutrition tracking, dieticians can keep track of the dietary intake of their patients and keep a check on them round the clock.
How using computer vision for nutrition tracking helps healthcare
People usually don’t follow the diet recommended to them by doctors. Additionally, keeping track of every meal, and every calorie consumed can become a tedious task. But, keeping a count of every calorie consumed and the type of food eaten is essential for people suffering from diabetes or obesity. Computer vision can aid patients in keeping track of their calorie count easily by automating the calorie counting process. Thanks to computer vision, people only need to click pictures of their meals, and the rest will be taken care of by the embedded artificial intelligence algorithms. The photo clicked by computer vision is uploaded on an app, which is then analyzed to recognize the dish and the serving size. Based on previously available data, the app can provide nutritional information about the food consumed. It can inform the user about the number of calories, proteins, carbohydrates, and other nutrients provided by the meal. The information is provided in real-time and thus proves to be an efficient method of nutrition tracking. The data can also be shared with the dietician over the internet. Therefore, they can continuously monitor their patients’ dietary intake. It, thus, not only helps individuals to manage their diet better but also assists doctors in keeping a tab on their patients and provide feedback in real-time.
The use of computer vision for nutrition tracking can result in the reduction of healthcare costs as individuals and dieticians have detailed information about the dietary intake. The technology can also be used by individuals not requiring medical care and just want to keep track of their nutritional intake. Further iterations of the technology can include the incorporation of nutrition tracking into food delivery apps where the data can automatically be synced with the app.
Manual reporting of food intake is often inaccurate or impractical. The use of computer vision for nutrition tracking can automate the process and make it highly reliable. The current market for fitness tracking and calorie monitoring apps is flooded with options. However, not many apps leverage computer vision technology in their framework. There is a lot of potential for incorporating computer vision technology into such apps that will prove beneficial to individuals and dieticians alike. Although in its infancy stage, computer vision has the potential to lead us on the path of a fit lifestyle, significantly decreasing healthcare costs.
