I Ate This: A Photo-based Food Journaling System with Expert Feedback

Abstract

What we eat is one of the most frequent and important health decisions we make in daily life, yet it remains notoriously difficult to capture and understand. Effective food journaling is thus a grand challenge in personal health informatics. In this paper we describe a system for food journaling called I Ate This, which is inspired by the Remote Food Photography Method (RFPM). I Ate This is simple: you use a smartphone app to take a photo and give a very basic description of any food or beverage you are about to consume. Later, a qualified dietitian will evaluate your photo, giving you feedback on how you did and where you can improve. The aim of I Ate This is to provide a convenient, visual and reliable way to help users learn from their eating habits and nudge them towards better choices each and every day. Ultimately, this incremental approach can lead to long-term behaviour change. Our goal is to bring RFPM to a wider audience, through APIs that can be incorporated into other apps.