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ScanDiet: a Diet Management System with Barcode Scanning Technology Chin-Wen Cheng Christine Wu Wei-Ru Lay Georgia Institute of Technology Georgia Institute of Technology Georgia Institute of Technology Department of Electrical and Department of Literature and College of Architecture Computer Engineering Communication and Culture Atlanta, GA 30332 Atlanta, GA 30322 Atlanta, GA 30332 678 938 0287 678 468 3043 334 444 8974 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

ABSTRACT the Economic Research Service of the USDA (ERS) stated During the last 40 years, the population of children, that the food available person has creased 16%, or about adolescents, and adults with obesity has increased 523 calories extra. In the 1990’s about 216 calories of those dramatically. Because prevention is more effective than 523 were fats and sugars [3]. The USDA and FDA have treatment, efforts to maintain a healthy weight as well as taken steps to combat this increase by encouraging the diet behavior should be covered in all age ranges. consumption of whole grains and raw foods by changing Currently, most diet management tools are not popular dietary guidelines and improving the graphical food because they either cannot track comprehensive diet pyramid (ref-4). Michelle Obama has also taken the matters information, or require time-consuming input methods. In into her own hands, attempting to provide a better this project, we present the design and prototype of nutritional base for future generations through the Let’s ScanDiet, an easy-to-use tool in daily nutrition intake Move Campaign [4]. The campaign urges children to management. ScanDiet uses barcode technology which exercise in their free time, and also encourages parents to provides an one-scan-and-done nutrition entry solution. participate in activity and healthy eating habits. The back-end database is built on Cloud Computing services that can be accessed by a web-based tool via both While the government works to inform and encourage personal computer and smartphone. The tool provides user- citizens to live healthier lives, a myriad of supplements, friendly interfaces that help efficiently and diets, and online tools have emerged in response to those comprehensively manage nutrition behavior by tracking the who are battling with weight. Many companies and user’s long-term food purchasing behavior. This project services are leveraging the ubiquity of Internet, and using aims to maximize the potential of ScanDiet to be the nutritional information as a resource for those who are impetus for public health in diet management by the seeking a change in lifestyle. Examples of these efforts are advance of the state-of-the-art information technology. websites such as WebMD, LoseIt, or CalorieCount, which KEYWORDS contain tools that help users balance their daily diets and Diet Management, Barcode, Cloud Computing, Mobile Device, calculate their daily consumption vs. daily calorie burn [5- Interface 7]. The sites also offer a large user community, usually in the form of a forum that allows users to interact with each INTRODUCTION other and push each other towards their goals. While Obesity is an epidemic that has grown exponentially in the structured commercial programs such as Jenny Craig or past twenty years. The condition is defined as having a Weight Watchers has been proven to be more effective than Body Mass Index (BMI) of 30 or above. The growth has self-help, self-motivated weight loss that is supported by been especially noticeable in the southern states such as sites such as LoseIt have expansive user communities that Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Louisiana continue to grow [8-10]. [1]. Also notable is that the majority of the obese populations are largely composed of blacks or Hispanics. Recent growth on this topic has been in the mobile market. While strong ties can be seen between obesity and different The portable form factor allows users the accessibility they ethnicities and geographic regions, the general increase is demand to keep track of their meals and exercise. Over 100 an indication of the change in lifestyle and consumption apps can now be found in the Apple AppStore for iPhone habits of the American population. For instance, 34.4% of that target the health sector. Apps such as Absolute Fitness Mississippi’s population was deemed as obese in 2009. sport an extensive food and exercise database that can be Data from 2008 indicates that at least 31.2% of adults were accessed in a graphic format [11]. inactive during their leisure time in all but fifteen of To address the aforementioned issues, in this project, we Mississippi’s eighty-two counties [2]. present ScanDiet which focuses on creating a similar venue In addition to this trend of inactivity was the rise in calories of diet information. It provides users a more convenient being consumed. A report released November of 2005 by access to their personalized data. Instead of forcing the user to enter their food item by item, we adopt barcode scanning technology securely isolates ScanDiet , providing reliable technology as the data entry. In order to increase environment that is independent of the hardware, operating accessibility, ScanDiet is cross-platform, and can be system, and physical location. It can protect private accessed via web or on mobile devices as a web app. information, e.g. credit card information and personal health data, from being violated by illegal access. As for SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION The system consists of two main parts: (1) cloud computing database establishment, ScanDiet does not access a services and (2) mobile platform. The system architecture is traditional relational database such as MySQL, or SQLite. shown in Figure 1. Instead, it uses Google Datastore, which takes more of a hierarchical object-oriented storage approach. The Google Datastore is based on Google’s Bigtable technology. They help ScanDiet achieve more efficient and scalable data storage, given the dynamic and distributed nature of the Google infrastructure. Finally GAE applications can authenticate users using Google Accounts mechanism. An application can detect whether the current user has signed in, and can redirect the user to a sign-in page to sign in or create a new account. Google Accounts also provides email service, which can be used to send notification of user registration as well as nutrition goals. Mobile Platform Figure 1. System Architecture The mobile platform was chosen for its portability and Cloud Computing Services accessibility. It has also been noted by other studies that The back-end server is used to store nutrition information access to mobile platforms is much larger than that of a of different food and receipt data of all purchasing history. desktop computer [13]. In fact, minority populations such Because of the rapid increase in the amount of data, the as African Americans and Latinos lead the use of mobile implementation and maintenance procedure of traditional data applications. In a 2010 survey, it was shown that of the database that is used to store nutrition and purchasing 82% of Americans, 38% used the phone for Internet access. information have become more and more challenging. In designing for a mobile platform, considerations such as Because of these issues, cloud computing technology was size and readability must be taken into account that does used to build our back-end services of ScanDiet. It not apply to the larger desktop or laptop screens. Our web overcomes five key issues that traditionally affect the app utilizes jQuery Mobile, which is a touch optimized web quality and efficiency of database establishment and framework that is based on JQuery, a javascript library maintenance, such as (1) reducing hardware costs, (2) [14]. jQuery Mobile offers a great advantage when facilitating remote access, (3) relieving cost of downtime, designing for mobile--many of the interactions and (4) avoiding the potential for loss of data, and (5) animations follow standard interactions that can be seen on optimizing the system’s scalability. many touch-optimized platforms like iPhone or Android. In Google App Engine (GAE) [12] was used to build the addition, font sizes are pre-styled so that large-screen to back-end server of ScanDiet. It is a platform for developing mobile compression is eliminated. These styles are also and hosting web applications in Google’s managed data scalable, so they can also be viewed easily on a larger centers. GAE applications are easy to build, maintain, and desktop or laptop screen. Pre-built jQuery plugins are also are highly scalable based on the growth of data traffic and compatible with jQuery Mobile. Our particular demo used storage needs of food and purchasing information. With HighCharts in order to create interactive graphs for GAE, there are no servers to maintain: we just upload our visualizing the user data [15]. application, and the services are ready to be accessed. With Basic styles are preset by a stylesheet that has been GAE, we only pay for what we use. There are no set-up provided by JQuery Mobile. These styles then applied to a costs and no maintenance fees. We can control the layered div structure that creates each page. To plan for the maximum amounts of resources that ScanDiet users can mobile page a diagram was made of all of the features the consume, so it always stays within our budget. Besides, the users could access using the app (refer to fig. W) Each most important, GAE is free up to a certain level for system branch was then created as a div with the data-role of development, which is more than enough to the start-up “page”. Within a typical jQuery Mobile page, child divs phase of the ScanDiet project. can take on data-roles as header, content or footers. These GAE provides different components of service to meet data-roles act as ID’s for CSS styles and jQuery functions. requirements of different applications. The GAE services In the ScanDiet web app, the “pages” were all linked that we adopted in ScanDiet include (1) Sandbox, (2) internally in a HTML file. Google Datastore, and (3) Google Account. The Sandbox USE CASES AND USER INTERFACES (3) the shopping history from the scanned receipts; (4) the Use Cases statistics from every purchase; (5) their own set goals. The use case describes how a ScanDiet customer uses the diet managing system by scanning receipts to track their grocery shopping habits with aggregated data. In Figure 2, there are three main sections of the use case. The first section is the purchasing phase. For example, after purchasing some items from the grocery store, the user will get the receipts, which already contains the aggregated nutrition data and purchase information in the barcode. By scanning the provided barcode on the receipt, information from scan goes into the second phase, which is the cloud computing system. In this section, users’ purchases and profile information is stored in the cloud. In this section, user’s purchasing and personal information is stored the cloud. The information includes: (1) the personal information, such as weight, height and age; (2) the Figure 3. User interface flow shopping history from the scanned receipts; (3) the one- The detailed interfaces are shown in the following figures. time or accumulated statistics from every purchase. (4) user Figure 4 shows the login page, which contains the goals. Finally, the third section allows users to retrieve the information of username and password. After logging in to information from cloud system by logging in to personal the account, they can choose from one of the five icons account from multi-platform. In this phase, user can look at (Figure 12) shown on the bottom shown in every page. the purchasing history; track their shopping habits from Clicking the home icon shows personal profiles page their accumulated statistics; set their personal goals and get (Figure 5) includes age, height, weight and workout time. tips to achieve healthy goals from the ScanDiet system. Users can also enter the editing page (Figure 6) to modify their personal information. Next, clicking the scan icon allows users to add new receipts by entering or scanning the barcode (Figure 7). The history menu (Figure 8) lists the date, the time and the amount of purchased receipts. The statistic page (Figure 9) provides different visualizations of data that is derived from the user’s receipts. For instance, the user can view charts of what food groups have they have consumed in the past; the calories consumed and burned; and the cost of different food groups. Finally, ScanDiet also provides tips (Figure 10) such as eating tips, exercise tips, daily recipe and daily inspiration are tips offered by the system appear in Figure 11.

Figure 2. Three phases of use case

User Interfaces In this project, we developed a web-based application for the ScanDiet system. Figure 3 shows the user interface flow of the whole system. After they log into their account, they Figure 4. The login page Figure 5. The home page can access to the following information: (1) their personal information; (2) the barcode input function, either by “scanning” the barcode or providing the barcode number; Figure 12. Five icons of different functions

CONCLUSION In this project, we designed and developed the prototype of ScanDiet to help people efficiently manage nutrition intake. Unlike other nutrition management tools, we aim to use barcode scanning technology to facilitate data entry in operation of just one-click. Each receipt barcode contains

rich information about the information of the purchased Figure 6. Personal information edit page food such as nutrition and price. Scanned data is automatically transmitted to and stored in a cloud database, which realizes a long-term diet behavior tracking capability. The database also contains a variety of information as health tips to help people pursue diet and exercise targets and develop a better eating and cooking behavior. We also developed user interfaces that can access all the data in the cloud. The web-based application [Conc] can be deployed without any restriction of platforms, which means users can access the information via both their personal computers and mobile phones anytime and anywhere. We hope ScanDiet can be a pioneer prototype in nutrition management research and products by bring a

highly comprehensive food, exercise, and health Figure 7. The scan page Figure 8. The receipt history information with only a simplest data entry operation. FUTURE WORK The web-based interface is just the start of ScanDiet. The current prototype is unable to access the camera functions of the smart phone. As a result, the user must input their receipt using the receipt number instead of simply scanning the barcode. Because one major factor that prevents long- term usage of diet management systems is the time taken for input, we hope to make the data input procedure as laconic as possible. A mobile app is our next goal for ScanDiet; we hope that by providing ScanDiet in a mobile form, users can access Figure 9. The statistic page Figure 10. The goals and the tips and input the information in a more convenient form factor. However, many details like synchronizing data between a mobile device and cloud database, designing of new interfaces, and more technical specification are still not specified. After increasing the usability of the mobile interface, our project can be extended in several directions. We would like to seek prospective cooperators like grocery store owners. Currently, some grocery stores already implement a system that saves the purchasing information of customers. However, customers cannot retrieve their shopping history from the system. Our product usability can be largely increased if our cooperator can use ScanDiet as their platform to share purchasing information with their Figure 11. Different pages of tips customers. Customers can then track and manage their own shopping behavior offline or access more functions and data online through our mobile interface. One of the major benefits of ScanDiet is allowing both users and grocery stores to track purchases in a detailed, specific manner. ScanDiet’s database can be expanded to include allergens; if users specify their own allergies in their profile, they can be warned of possible allergens in their food that they may not notice from a glance at the label. Also, dates correlated with the database of receipts means that if any food recalls are made, the users can be notified by the grocery store based upon the items that they have purchased. Furthermore, we also propose an application for restaurants. Expanding from grocery stores to restaurants, we can make ScanDiet more inclusive by providing information for both eating behavior at home and outside the home. These future works, namely, technical improvement and cooperator seeking, can make the ScanDiet a more comprehensive and promising product for managing health. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The project thanks Prof. Ellen Y. Do and Brian Jones, College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, for providing advice and a great environment for the system design, implementation, and development of ScanDiet. REFERENCES