The Budget Friendly Foodie

Inspiration

Back in university, I didn't have the cash in order to make the healthiest food choices at home. If I only knew what I could make with my limited budget, then I wouldn't have gained the freshman 15! As I went through university, I learned about food insecurity and how privileged I was compared to others out there.

Food insecurity is an issue that affects families all over the United States with approximately 11 million children affected. This isn't just about hunger, but it's about the ability to provide healthy and sustainable food choices for an individual or family.

Usually, the most 'budget-friendly' options that most low-income families go to are highly processed foods, such as canned goods, frozen meals, or fast food. This has contributed to the increased rates of diabetes and other metabolic diseases amongst these vulnerable communities. In addition, most of them do not have much time to meal prep or even cook, so time to cook must be taken into consideration.

That's where the Foodie comes in! With a simple input of your location, time, number of servings, and budget, the foodie can give you various recipe suggestions with which to provide healthier options for your family!

What it does

The Budget Friendly Foodie enables people to make healthier food choices. The app takes into account where you live, what your weekly budget for food is, how much time (on average) you have to cook, and how many servings you need/want. With that information, it provides a few quick and easy recipes that can aid in your meal prep or help your family have healthier food options instead of going for take out or that canned/microwaved stuff.

How we built it

After interviewing around 50 university students and about 6 families on SNAP, I was able to determine the most important factors in helping them make choices as to what they are going to eat. They aren't necessarily worried about the type of cuisine, but instead, want food options that will be healthy and not break the bank.

With that information, I was able to take the different inputs to provide potential recipes that people would quickly make and enjoy!

Challenges we ran into

The image generation for the various recipes was not the best. I think it combined the various recipes into some amalgam.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

This is my first ever solo-hackathon project. I'm glad I did it.

What we learned

I learned about the various challenges that people face when struggling to provide healthier meal options for their families. It was rather humbling.

In addition, I learned about how the specificity of the information given into a generative AI model will greatly affect the outcome. Even the slightest changes in syntax can make the AI interpret your words differently than intended.

What's next for The Budget Friendly Foodie

Currently, the Foodie only offers generic information as to what grocery stores are nearby (and their addresses) that would offer the various ingredients. In the future, this module can be optimized to provide the most budget friendly (i.e. cheapest) store while also providing extra recipes that would fit into the budget given a few more ingredients. Finally, the image generation module would hopefully be tweaked to provide images of different recipes instead of giving an amalgamated image of the various recipes.

Built With

• partyrock