Need to count calories on your plate? Take a picture

Who knew snapping pictures could be fun and healthy? Google is developing an app which will tell you exactly how many calories are on your plate by just taking a picture of your food.

The tech giant is naming it Im2calories, an app which uses advanced image recognition technology to analyse the pixels and give an approximate number of calorie intake based on the image of your food.

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How does it do this? It works out the size of each piece of food in relation to the plate, as well as any condiments that are placed beside it. And the best part is, it doesn't require high-resolution images, even an Insta-quality image would do.

“If we can do this for food, that’s just the killer app,” said Google research scientist Kevin Murphy.

However, the app is still in the pipelines, there's a high possibility that it might mistaken a friend egg for a poached egg. Another major problem is that it cannot determine the content of hidden fats such as oil and butter. So it's not foolproof as yet.

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“If it only works 30 per cent of the time, it's enough that people will start using it, we'll collect data, and it'll get better over time,” said Kevin.

He is hopeful that the app will help simplify the process of keeping a food diary, without having to type in details of each food item consumed and its quantity into an app.

The system is semi-autonomous. For instance, if it is unable to accurately determine the exact type of food from the image, it will provide a drop down menu with a list of its best guesses, reported Dailymail.

A date has not been announced for the release of Im2Calories, but Food Republic has reported that this technology can eventually work on completing other favors for humankind, such as finding parking spaces.

Till then have fun on Instagram.

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