UT Dining Halls - Meal Planner

Inspiration

From the beginning of the school year, I have lost 10 pounds. Additionally, scouting for menu items that fit in with my macros using the UT Dining App made it incredible exhausting to eat. When I received my acceptance, I was really hungry, but I also didn't wanna go to the dining hall, so the idea came to mind.

What it does

Finds an optimal meal plan based on calorie and macros goal.

How we built it

Using a greedy algorithm to the problem, which was essentially a 0/1 Knapsack problem.

Challenges we ran into

Unfamiliarity with the Python language, streamlit API, GitHub, json, and more made the task daunting and incredible slow-paced. However, I managed to survive it to make a bare-bones demo.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

It actually works (kind of). I didn't expect to actually be able to do this within 24 hours, so I'm really excited that it actually somewhat took shape.

What we learned

Before trying to improve something, you should just make it exist first. I tried to hard to find the most perfect, optimized algorithm, but I never actually understood it. In the end, I came back to the greedy approach because it was the simplest to code.

What's next for UT Dining Halls - Meal Planner

I need to put more weights on other nutrients besides macros because the algorithm REALLY likes fruit. Currently, it recommends you to eat 3 apples, 3 oranges, and 3 servings of fresh cubed pineapples. Of course, that is a fiber-rich diet, but it is too filling and lacks actual proteins and fats.