Deep learning accurately predicts food categories and nutrients based on ingredient statements.

Journal: Food chemistry
Published Date:

Abstract

Determining attributes such as classification, creating taxonomies and nutrients for foods can be a challenging and resource-intensive task, albeit important for a better understanding of foods. In this study, a novel dataset, 134 k BFPD, was collected from USDA Branded Food Products Database with modification and labeled with three food taxonomy and nutrient values and became an artificial intelligence (AI) dataset that covered the largest food types to date. Overall, the Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP)-TF-SE method obtained the highest learning efficiency for food natural language processing tasks using AI, which achieved up to 99% accuracy for food classification and 0.98 R for calcium estimation (0.93 ∼ 0.97 for calories, protein, sodium, total carbohydrate, total lipids, etc.). The deep learning approach has great potential to be embedded in other food classification and regression tasks and as an extension to other applications in the food and nutrient scope.

Authors

  • Peihua Ma
    School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China; Department of Nutrition and Food Science, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20740, United States.
  • Zhikun Zhang
    Mental Health Center of the First Affiliated Hospital, Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, Guangxi, China.
  • Ying Li
    School of Information Engineering, Chang'an University, Xi'an 710010, China.
  • Ning Yu
    Department of Computing Sciences, The College at Brockport, State University of New York, 350 New Campus Drive, Brockport, 14420, NY, USA. nyu@brockport.edu.
  • Jiping Sheng
    School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China. Electronic address: shengjiping@126.com.
  • Hande Küçük McGinty
    Department of Computer Science, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA.
  • Qin Wang
    Department of Pharmacy, Affiliated Hospital of Nantong University, Nantong, China.
  • Jaspreet K C Ahuja
    U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service, Beltsville Human Nutrition Research Center, 10300 Baltimore Ave, Bldg. 005, BARC-WEST, Beltsville, MD 20705, USA.