Inspiration
Every 2 in 5 Americans are classified as medically obese. Obesity is the leading cause of suffering in many developed countries, not because of the lack of healthy food available but more so due to the lack of information that many brands provide.
In our quest to combat this ever-growing issue globally, we decided to make a nutrition app that not only helped people track their food but also proactively help people in making better choices.
What it does
Fiber uses your camera to scan barcodes that are located on the back of most products. Using the OpenFoodFacts API we access the biggest collection of nutrition information in current human history allowing us to intelligently identify the ingredients and allergens.
We parse this information into the OpenAI API using industry-leading generative AI to inform the user of the pros and cons of the product.
How we built it
We created a mobile application front end using React-Native allowing for great cross-platform functionality. Accessing our backend written in Python with Flask, which provides an endpoint for searching the OpenFoodFacts database for product information.
We further used OpenAI's GPT3.5 turbo model to summarize and list the benefits and disadvantages as a summary of the ingredients.
Challenges we ran into
Due to the millions of variations of mobile devices that are available globally, we ran into a few issues ensuring that Fiber ran well on a wide variety of devices. In addition, permissions for the camera and the barcode scanning functionality were a small hurdle.
The biggest challenge we ran into was learning how to work together as a team, but a few hours in we got the hang of it, using tools on GitHub to optimize our ability to work together.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We are proud to learn more about the various technologies involved and working with AI to push our purpose through an application. Through this, we were able to make learning more about various products quicker, easier, and more efficient.
What we learned
During the creation of the project, we learned a lot more about the pros and cons of different everyday products. It was surprising to see the various ingredients and potential hazards as well. After the creation of the project, our team was able to gain a deeper understanding of implementing AI into an application and revealed potential issues with everyday products.
What's next for Fiber: Your AI Nutrition Companion
In the future, we hope to add more features that will specify additional information about the product, including the nutrition facts and some potential ways that the product could be used. For example, some food products could include recipes on various nutritional dishes.
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