Popular Science reports that Google is developing a product that counts calories in food pictures. The app is called Im2Calories and is patent-pending.
At the Re-Work Deep Learning Summit in Boston, Google research scientist Kevin Murphy explained that Im2Calories analyses the individual elements in a picture to give you a complete calorie summary of what you've photographed. According to Phys.org, if Im2Calories identifies your eggs (or any food) as poached instead of fried, you have the option of correcting it with options from a dropdown menu. Or you can choose to lie by omission!
Im2Calories isn't meant to shame people though, Murphy said. He envisions it eventually replacing food diary apps, eliminating (1) the extra step of plugging your meals into a calculator and (2) the variables of serving sizes.
There's no set date on when the app will become available to the public. Murphy does hope, however, that this technology will eventually contribute to eliminating American obesity: "We can start to potentially join information from multiple people and start to do population level statistics. I have colleagues in epidemiology and public health, and they really want this stuff."
Yeah, well, the rest of the population wants to eat, photograph, and enjoy their cheeseburgers in blissful ignorance.
From the editors of Cosmo US
