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EECS 497: Food Allergies App. Brian Murphy, Jason Stanley, Jeremy Darby, Edgar Watson II. Need. Over 160 foods are known to cause food allergies FDA requires only 8 to be identified on food labels People with special dietary needs must know what brands they can/can’t buy
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EECS 497: Food Allergies App Brian Murphy, Jason Stanley, Jeremy Darby, Edgar Watson II
Need • Over 160 foods are known to cause food allergies • FDA requires only 8 to be identified on food labels • People with special dietary needs must know what brands they can/can’t buy • Some ingredients are “tricky” and unexpectedly contain allergens • e.g. Whey(milk), lecithin(soy), flour(wheat) source: www.fda.gov/Food/ResourcesForYou/Consumers/ucm079311.htm
Solution • Easy-to-use Android app that identifies specific allergens in food • Character recognition software reads label ingredients • Notifies user of potential allergens • Customizable allergen filters
Software Architecture • Character recognition software (OCR) • Database of FDA-identified ingredients • Database of user allergies • Classifies ingredients
GOTCHA’S • Implementing character recognition software • Small vocabulary • Simple typefaces • Building database of ingredients and allergies • Photographic quality of phone • Label corner cases • “Does not contain nuts”
Secret Sauce • Character recognition software • Taking picture of ingredients label • Character recognition vs. barcode • Supports unlimited number of products • Customizable allergy filter
Competition • “My Food Facts” iPhone App • Similar idea, costs $1.99, and has relatively poor reviews • Only allows scanning of barcodes • From about.com’s review: “My Food Facts shows a lot of promise, but the database behind the app is not quite robust enough at this point to make it useful on a day-to-day level for people with food allergies. The limited number of allergens that My Food Facts will screen for also limits the usefulness of the app.”