Eating healthy is difficult for me for several reasons. Firstly because what I want to eat the most is not necessarily the healthiest and secondly because sometimes you have to have a degree in chemistry to understanding food labels. Can AI help me too?
There are apps to help you make good decisions about your diet, such as Yuka, as well as initiatives to simplify labeling, such as Nutriscore, which is not without controversy. I tried using Gemini for this and, even if it will not replace a nutritionist and even less the doctor, at least it helps in some cases.
Important: Do not use Gemini (or any other AI) as a substitute for advice from a doctor, nutritionist, or specialist, as they often display false or inaccurate information. |
Ok Google, should I eat this or not?
Google’s AI was recently criticized for recommending using glue in the cheese mixture on pizza. So this doesn’t seem like the best place to ask about health issues. The good news is that Gemini no longer recommends eating glue. The future has arrived.
Gemini’s image recognition has improved enough to be able to help recognize foods with a photo. Food, or something you shouldn’t eat, which is just as important.
There identification of dishes using a photo This is still very complicated for any AI, although Gemini does a decent job. He generally understands the general idea correctly, but he sprinkles in a series of imaginary data or that he simply did not understand well. For example, if you give him a photo of a salad, he will usually recognize that it is a salad but miss the visible ingredients, mentioning some that are not there and ignoring others that are.
This can help you in cases where you are not clear about what is in front of you (for example, in a restaurant). Once Gemini has an idea of what dish it is, can estimate its nutritional informationalthough you have to take this data with a huge grain of salt.
The good thing is that if you have a specific diet (e.g. low salt) or if you want to avoid certain ingredients, you can include this in the request to Gemini, although it is always best to officially confirm the information with the person who prepared the dish in case of allergies or intolerances. Technology is what it is and expecting it to do a complete and magical recognition from a 2D photo is simply asking too much.
Gemini can also read the ingredient label and nutritional value from a photo, saving you the trouble of having to do it yourself. This allows you to ask important questions like what happens if you eat the whole bag of chips, useful in cases where the brand sets a ridiculously small standard serving size.
The nutritional value of a bag of potatoes says it contains six servings, but if you plan on finishing the entire bag, things change and Gemini can help you calculate how much.
Geminis usually behave by calculating calories, fats and carbohydrates, although personally For this type of task, I would prefer to use a specialized application, like Yuka. After all, Gemini is a conversational AI, not a nutritional one, so since it tends to hallucinate from time to time, this means you have to check all the math calculations, which makes it faster to do them yourself.
I have Nutriscore
The hardest thing about healthy eating is knowing if something is healthy or not. There is no universal answer to this question, but I managed transform Gemini into my own Nutriscore. Or rather in my Sanometer. All I needed was the following prompt:
I want to eat healthier and I want you to help me by becoming a food identification machine. Every time I send you a photo, I want you to respond with a SANOMETER which indicates the health level of the food from 1 to 10 taking into account its nutritional information. If nutritional information is not provided, you will need to estimate and calculate it. In each case I want you to add the sanameter with a graph like this, indicating the percentage of calories, fats and salts that corresponds to the recommended amount for an adult as a general rule, two positive points on said dish ( if it has them), and two negative points (if you have them).
> SANOMETER [ ████░░░░ ] 50% healthy
> calories: 25% | fat: 10% | salt: 25%
+ low fat
+ good fiber content
-too much sugar
-overly processed product
Answer only following this template, without adding anything else
I start with the following photo
Now, every time I send a photo to Gemini, it analyzes what dish it is, calculates its nutritional value and gives me a summary of his health, in your opinion. I have to say that, despite my attempts to summarize everything in a compact format, Gemini insists on over-explaining, for better or worse.
Again, the main advantage is that you can customize the calculation influencing that you take one piece of information into account more than another. For example, there will be those who will have to pay special attention to sugar or salt or those who will want the Sanometer to mark a zero if there is meat, because they are vegetarian or vegan. The possibilities are endless.
Of course, Gemini is a conversational AI and not a nutritionist, so You have to be very skeptical of everything he says., because in addition to being an astonishing AI, it is hallucinatory: it tends to invent things that seem plausible. It’s getting better little by little.
So Gemini surprised me by marking me a hamburger that is about 70% healthy, just the justification I needed to put another one between my chest and back. Too good to be true?
The healthy option. I knew it.
If something seems strange to you, just ask for explanations and Gemini, with the patience of a saint, will take it upon himself to argue the reason for his score. This Nutriscore does not do that.
Again, you should ask yourself if the answer makes sense and ask for further clarification if necessary. In my testing, I found it helpful ask Gemini to specify the data it uses, such as the dish it detected or the nutritional values it calculated for it. This makes it easier to know whether the explanations are based on something or not.
And how does the Sanometer work? Well, after trying it with different types of foods, the truth is that at least It’s consistent to a certain extent.. A salad scores 80% on the scoreboard, even if Gemini mistakenly identifies it as a rice salad.
Others clearly unhealthy optionslike a package of pizza, hot dog, hamburger and chicken wings, takes 50% off the health meter. Personally, I think it should be even lower, but this ability to turn so finely will require an evolution of Gemini to be effective.
Great for explaining ingredients or questions
The blood pressure meter remains a curiosity that should not be taken too seriously, but the real usefulness of Gemini lies in explain the ingredients of a product. The only thing you need to do is attach a photo where the list of ingredients can be clearly read.
Now I know what steviol glycosides are
In fact, I noticed that Gemini Sometimes he goes too far in his explanations, telling a short bible that becomes even longer by integrating reference images. So I preferred to use this fast:
Explain to me in a list, in a concise manner and without using images, what each of the ingredients are and what they are used for in a food product.
This makes Gemini a machine to explain ingredients in an easy-to-understand way. Enigmatic names become less scary when you know what they are and why they are there.
For some reason, these cereals contain folic acid in their ingredients.
Today is a good use of Gemini because To do this manually, you will have to do a lot of Google searcheswhile in Gemini you get a summary from a photo.
Cover image | Image by Frank Reppold on Pixabay
In Xataka Android | I asked Gemini to give me some original salad ideas and I don’t think I’ll eat anything else this summer