A food recipe recommendation system based on nutritional factors in the Finnish food communit

Abstract. This thesis presents a comprehensive study on the relationships between user feedback, recipe content, and additional factors in the context of a recipe recommendation system. The aim was to investigate the influence of various factors on user ratings and comments related to nutritional variables, while also exploring the potential for personalized recipe suggestions. Statistical analysis, clustering techniques, and sentiment analysis were employed to analyze a dataset of food recipes and user feedback. We determined that user feedback is a complex phenomenon influenced by subjective factors beyond recipe content alone. Cluster analysis identified four distinct clusters within the dataset, highlighting variations in nutritional values and sentiment among recipes. However, due to an imbalanced distribution within the clusters, these relationships were not considered in the recommendation system. To address the absence of user-related data, a content-based filtering approach was implemented, utilizing nutritional factors and a health factor calculation. The system provides personalized recipe recommendations based on nutritional similarity and health considerations. A maximum limit of 20 recommended recipes was set, allowing users to specify the desired number of recommendations. The accompanying API also provides a mean squared error metric to assess recommendation quality. This research contributes to a better understanding of user preferences, recipe content, and the challenges in developing effective recommendation systems for food recipes

A Linear General Type-2 Fuzzy Logic Based Computing With Words Approach for Realising an Ambient Intelligent Platform for Cooking Recipes Recommendation

This paper addresses the need to enhance transparency in ambient intelligent environments by developing more natural ways of interaction, which allow the users to communicate easily with the hidden networked devices rather than embedding obtrusive tablets and computing equipment throughout their surroundings. Ambient intelligence vision aims to realize digital environments that adapt to users in a responsive, transparent, and context-aware manner in order to enhance users' comfort. It is, therefore, appropriate to employ the paradigm of “computing with words” (CWWs), which aims to mimic the ability of humans to communicate transparently and manipulate perceptions via words. One of the daily activities that would increase the comfort levels of the users (especially people with disabilities) is cooking and performing tasks in the kitchen. Existing approaches on food preparation, cooking, and recipe recommendation stress on healthy eating and balanced meal choices while providing limited personalization features through the use of intrusive user interfaces. Herein, we present an application, which transparently interacts with users based on a novel CWWs approach in order to predict the recipe's difficulty level and to recommend an appropriate recipe depending on the user's mood, appetite, and spare time. The proposed CWWs framework is based on linear general type-2 (LGT2) fuzzy sets, which linearly quantify the linguistic modifiers in the third dimension in order to better represent the user perceptions while avoiding the drawbacks of type-1 and interval type-2 fuzzy sets. The LGT2-based CWWs framework can learn from user experiences and adapt to them in order to establish more natural human-machine interaction. We have carried numerous real-world experiments with various users in the University of Essex intelligent flat. The comparison analysis between interval type-2 fuzzy sets and LGT2 fuzzy sets demonstrates up to 55.43% improvement when general type-2 fuzzy sets are used than when interval type-2 fuzzy sets are used instead. The quantitative and qualitative analysis both show the success of the system in providing a natural interaction with the users for recommending food recipes where the quantitative analysis shows the high statistical correlation between the system output and the users' feedback; the qualitative analysis presents social scienc

Spatial user interface : augmenting human sensibilities in a domestic kitchen

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2005.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 83-90).The real world is not a computer screen. When can augmented reality and ambient interfaces improve the usability of a physical environment? This thesis presents data from design studies and experiments that demonstrate the value for ambient information and augmented reality design. The domestic kitchen is used as a domain to place smart technologies and to study visual attention,multi-tasking, food-preparation and disruptiveness. Human perception in visually complex environments can be significantly enhanced by overlaying intuitive, immersive and attentive displays. Placing Graphical User Interface designs in a physical environment made only 20% of the subjects understand what to do in the Soft-Boiled Egg experiment. In the stovetop study, 94% of the subjects understood that the augmented stovetop was still hot and dangerous through the abstract and immersive display, while only 19% of the subjects were able to determine that the normal stovetop was still hot from a distance. In the Sink study, 94% of the subjects immediately understood that the water was hot by its red color. Useful knowledge about cooking, safety, and using home appliances can be embedded with sensors into the physical environment.(cont.) Causal-related cooking events (i.e. when a subject opened the freezer and then stood in front of the microwave, a 'Defrost' appeared on the microwave.) were added in KitchenSense in order to maintain an easily understood physical environment.by Jackie Chia-Hsun Lee.S.M

Computing point-of-view : modeling and simulating judgments of taste

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2006.Includes bibliographical references (p. 153-163).People have rich points-of-view that afford them the ability to judge the aesthetics of people, things, and everyday happenstance; yet viewpoint has an ineffable quality that is hard to articulate in words, let alone capture in computer models. Inspired by cultural theories of taste and identity, this thesis explores end-to-end computational modeling of people's tastes-from model acquisition, to generalization, to application- under various realms. Five aesthetical realms are considered-cultural taste, attitudes, ways of perceiving, taste for food, and sense-of-humor. A person's model is acquired by reading her personal texts, such as a weblog diary, a social network profile, or emails. To generalize a person model, methods such as spreading activation, analogy, and imprimer supplementation are applied to semantic resources and search spaces mined from cultural corpora. Once a generalized model is achieved, a person's tastes are brought to life through perspective-based applications, which afford the exploration of someone else's perspective through interactivity and play. The thesis describes model acquisition systems implemented for each of the five aesthetical realms.(cont.) The techniques of 'reading for affective themes' (RATE), and 'culture mining' are described, along with their enabling technologies, which are commonsense reasoning and textual affect analysis. Finally, six perspective-based applications were implemented to illuminate a range of real-world beneficiaries to person modeling-virtual mentoring, self-reflection, and deep customization.by Xinyu Hugo Liu.Ph.D

Quantity food production text and cognitive evaluation device development

This research was designed to develop a quantity food preparation study guide of selected topics combining the basic knowledge in the purchasing, production, and storage of foods and the related principles of food science. A 66-item cognitive achievement test was developed to measure cognitive change. Marshall and Merritt\u27s (1985) Learning Style Questionnaire (LSQ) was used to investigate the relationship between respondents\u27 learning styles and cognitive change between pre- and posttest administrations. Statistical analyses were completed to research relationships between and among cognitive change, learning style, and selected demographic data: age, gender, time spent reading the study guide, months of work experience, and highest attained level of education;The research sample consisted of 31 students enrolled in Quantity Food Production Management Experience, HRI 380L, at Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa; 18 students enrolled in the Food Production Training Program at Clinton Community College, Clinton, Iowa; and 17 students enrolled in the Food Production Training Program at Des Moines Area Community College, Ankeny, Iowa;The predominant learning style as theorized by Kolb (1976) for the students in the research samples was that of diverger. The study assumed there were no significant changes between pre- and post-learning styles;The demographic variables of age, gender, and highest level of education attained and months of related foodservice work experience were used to investigate any significant (p ≤.05) relationships with learning style and cognitive change. None of the demographic variables demonstrated predictability of cognitive change. Only pretest highest level of education attained, age, and gender were significantly related with learning style at the p ≤.01, p ≤.05 levels, respectively;As expected, cognitive change is positively correlated with posttest scores (r =.660, p ≤.01). Pretest and posttest scores are also positively correlated (r =.662, p ≤.01). The mean pretest score for the combined groups is 33.1 with a standard deviation of 5.7. The mean posttest score is slightly higher, 36.3, with a standard deviation of 7.5. The mean combined group mean cognitive change score is 3.2 with a standard deviation of 5.7;The number of minutes spent reading the QFPS guide is positively correlated with posttest scores (r =.289, p ≤.05; 8.35% of the cognitive change score is attributable to the posttest score;The 66-item cognitive achievement test demonstrated a Kuder-Richardson reliability estimate of.77. The refined 55-item test\u27s KR-20 is.75;As a result of the positive cognitive change, respondent evaluations, and resulting Kuder-Richardson reliability estimates, the Quantity Food Production Study guide and cognitive achievement device are an acceptable educational method for the target population, self-directed adult learners working as foodservice supervisors in intermediate and extended-care nursing facilities

Eat like a local : a culture cuisine guide for the English-speaking visitor in a non-major city in China : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for a Master in Design at Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand

Cuisine and dining traditions are emblematic of local culture (Sutton, 2010), and tourism food consumption is an important way for travellers to experience the local culture (Chang, Kivela, & Mak, 2010; Germann Molz, 2007). As we know, China is not an English-speaking country, which has become a barrier for non-Chinese speaking travellers to travel independently. However, China is gradually perfecting multilingual translations of urban road signs and attractions, but there are still large gaps when it comes to food translations. In China, authentic food is usually hidden in the lives of local people. Due to many of these restaurants are family-owned inheritance of old stores with no commercial propaganda and gimmicks, and all rely on the reputation of customers. This project aims to design interactive media to help the English-speaking traveller to break the language barrier and experience Chinese food like a local. By focusing on authentic Chinese local food located in non-major cities that receive less attention from travellers. Most of the non-major cities are not well-known because there is not much tourist information available. Using the city of Changsha as a model, the function of interactive media will cover the basic functions of existing food apps, such as restaurant introductions, locations, recommendations, and menus and prices. Includes new features that differ from the general food app, such as food stories and dining traditions; food ingredients, with possible allergens; and diet habits. The goal is to design a digital guide for the English-speaking travellers in China

Development of a Flexitarian food product

Many studies show that plant-based diets are good for both human health and the environment and recommend lowering meat intake considering mounting environmental and animal welfare issues. This facet prompted protein transitions around the world, which in turn aided in the emergence of various diets. Flexitarian is one such diet that encourages people to consume more plant-based meals while also allowing them to eat meat on occasion, unlike other strict vegetarian diets. This project aims to develop a flexitarian food product that will complement flexitarian diet followers as well as consumers looking to minimize their meat intake while offering a tasty flexitarian food product with high nutritional value and minimal environmental impact, by using plant-based ingredients and by-products from the meat industry Mung beans were used as a plant-based ingredient, whereas cattle blood and pork intestine sausage casing were used as animal-derived components in the Flexi hot dog. Two test products were created, and panel members were invited to taste the sausages and perform sensory evaluations using a 9-point hedonic scale. Recipe 2 containing relatively more blood received a higher rating from panel members and thus became the winning version of the sausage, and however, both sausages overall impression received at the upper half of the scale, thus both products delighted the panel members in terms of sensory elements. In order to validate possible consumer demand, participants were requested to reply to open-ended survey questions to examine the possible target consumers for flexitarian diet and flexi hot dog. Many participants indicated that they would like to follow flexitarian diet and buy flexitarian sausage at least once a month. When examining the nutritional value of the Flexi sausage (based on the Livsmedelsverket food nutritional database for ingredients) compared to vegan sausages, the Flexi hot dog had higher energy, carbohydrate, fibre and iron content, and lower fat content. The Flexi hot dog has a relatively low environmental effect of roughly 1.3 kg CO2eq/kg, which is similar to vegan sausages, but lower than regular meat sausages. According to the findings of this study, the flexitarian hot dog pleased consumers’ taste palates, while also offering them nutritious flexitarian food with a low environmental impact; moreover, consumers are predicted to purchase this product at least once a month. Future developments of flexitarian food products are recommended to not deviate from the notion of flexitarian and emphasize the use of legumes and animal by-products, for a resource efficient food system