Product Type: All
Stage: Consumption
Problem: According to a 2012 report from the Natural Resources Defense Council, each year Americans throw out about one-quarter of the food they buy, costing an average family anywhere from $1,365 to $2,275 a year.
Solution: Researchers aiming to solve America’s food waste problem are taking cues from Instagram and are developing an app to measure food waste from food pictures.

1. The working name for the app is FoodImage, and it is based on another photo-based app that measures food consumption, called SmartIntake. The idea is to not only measure leftovers, but also how much food waste is generated during meal preparation—or whether leftovers get eaten.
   
2. SmartIntake is a smartphone-based application or app, used to remotely deliver accurate estimates of food and and nutrient intake among adults. To collect food intake data, the SmartIntake app uses the smart phone camera to capture images of the meal, which is then used to calculate waste in real time.
    
3. The participant labels the food selection images that are ambiguous, such as foods that do not include a package or brand name, with a brief descriptor (for example, “fried chicken”) that can be entered into the app via text or voice recording. Foods can also be identified by SmartIntake’s barcode scanner, which is used to identify fruits and vegetables.
4. The images are then sent to a server using the smartphone’s wireless network, where the images are analyzed to estimate food selection, plate waste, and food intake (such as calories, macronutrients and micronutrients).