Food For Thought

Inspiration

The inspiration for Food For Thought was the millions of individual children affected by Diabetes, and the large number of families battling food insecurity.

What it does

The primary use of Food For Thought is to be a tool to aid people with Diabetes by being able to create a meal plan and locate their nearest grocery store from their local hospital. This is done by accessing the home page and being able to locate your nearest grocery store by inputting longitude and latitude coordinates. The resulting information includes the distance from said grocery store to the nearest hospital. Under the “Meal Plan” page, you can search for any food and find nutritional information on it. This information includes the protein count, fat count, sodium count, and more. The nutritional labels from the FDA are condensed with a vast amount of unnecessary information, and Food For Thought gets rid of that. Furthermore, this site provides nutritional advice for those impacted by diabetes under the “Advice” page and gives a bit of backstory under the “About” page.

How we built it

We used Repl.It to collaborate and create a website using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Furthermore, we also used APIs to further develop and enhance our tools. The data platform Mapbox was used to integrate a built-in map application interface onto our site. We also utilized the API in the United States Department of Agriculture National Agricultural Library. This API provides various information on foods, such as the amount of protein, fat, sodium, carbohydrates, etc.

Challenges we ran into

Initially, the API we used from the United States Department of Agriculture was a demo. We realized this when there was an error trying to access this API after a prolonged period; we then obtained our own API key from the API website. Additionally, using the Mapbox API proved difficult when attempting to add on-click events to individual map markers; obtaining parameter data for each feature was not as straightforward as initially planned.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were very proud of being able to utilize and incorporate the software and IDE of Repl, languages including HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Moreover, we were proud to have learned and implemented the Mapbox and USDA FoodData Central API for the first time into a web application.

What we learned

We learned how to incorporate APIs into our code, from extracting the information to presenting it visually. Additionally, we learned the value of using asynchronous functions in website applications, how to integrate script javascript files externally, how to link template pages in a web application, and more.

What's next for Food For Thought

In the future, it would be interesting to convert this site into a mobile application so there are multiple points of access for this site. In certain circumstances, it is more convenient to use an app, so making an app version of this site would make it more accessible.