Photographing our food for Instagram like many do would also be good for our health. Explanations.
- Published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers have shown that we remember our food intake better when we take a photo of it.
- This state of affairs could make it possible to give more precise dietary advice to people wishing to eat better.
- The links between nutrition and health are increasingly well known.
According to a new investigation Taking photos of our meals could eventually help us eat more healthily, according to a researcher from Curtin University.
Published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the researchers served participants breakfast, lunch and dinner. They then gave them different methods to remember what they had eaten (taking pictures, writing notes or simply memorizing).
Nutrition and health: taking pictures of dishes helps you remember them better
The analyses revealed that memory accuracy was significantly higher for participants who took pictures of what they ate than for participants who did not.
“Accurate and reliable data on the population’s diet is essential to help people optimize their health,” said study director Clare Whitton.
Nutrition, health and photography: AI at the heart of future research
His team is now collaborating with Purdue University to use artificial intelligence to automatically analyze food in photos.
“It’s much easier for people to track what they’re consuming when they can just take pictures.”said study co-author Professor Deborah Kerr.
“It will become even easier when we start to fully automate the analysis of food in photos. With the advances in artificial intelligence, this will not be long in coming,” she also estimated.
According to the scientist, these new technologies could allow not only to better understand what populations eat but also to offer more precise dietary advice to people wishing to eat more healthily.
What are the links between nutrition and health?
The links between nutrition and health are increasingly well known, and the risk of developing many diseases – cancer, cardiovascular disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes – can be reduced by following good nutritional advice.
So, the National Nutrition Health Program (PNNS) has been offering nutritional recommendations since 2001 to promote public health. “These recommendations are accompanied by benchmarks aimed at promoting adequate consumption of different types of food and regular physical activity,” specifies Inserm.