Insight PhD candidate Cathal O’Hara has written about nutrition apps for RTE’s Brainstorm. In the piece he looks at the phenomenon of using apps to track diet and explains his own work. He writes

“I am currently working to see if we can make this process simpler. Can we train our computer vision technology to look at a photo of a meal as a whole and provide feedback on that, rather than focusing on breaking the meal into individual foods and providing a calculation based on adding all those components together? This could allow a greater focus on the patterns of the meals we consume and achieving a healthy variety in those patterns, rather than placing such great emphasis on the tracking of specific nutrients. We are currently seeking volunteers to participate in a study that will help lay the foundations for this work and they will be offered free personalised feedback on their dietary intakes.”