Using Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence to Explore the Nutrition and Sustainability of Recipes and Food

Marieke van Erp; Christian Reynolds; Diana Maynard; Alain Starke; Rebeca Ibáñez Martín; Frederic Andres; Maria C A Leite; Damien Alvarez de Toledo; Ximena Schmidt Rivera; Christoph Trattner; Steven Brewer; Carla Adriano Martins; Alana Kluczkovski; Angelina Frankowska; Sarah Bridle; Renata Bertazzi Levy; Fernanda Rauber; Jacqueline Tereza da Silva; Ulbe Bosma

doi:10.3389/frai.2020.621577

Using Natural Language Processing and Artificial Intelligence to Explore the Nutrition and Sustainability of Recipes and Food

Front Artif Intell. 2021 Feb 23:3:621577. doi: 10.3389/frai.2020.621577. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Marieke van Erp¹, Christian Reynolds², Diana Maynard³, Alain Starke⁴, Rebeca Ibáñez Martín⁵, Frederic Andres⁶, Maria C A Leite⁷, Damien Alvarez de Toledo⁶, Ximena Schmidt Rivera⁸, Christoph Trattner⁴, Steven Brewer⁹, Carla Adriano Martins¹⁰, Alana Kluczkovski¹⁰, Angelina Frankowska¹⁰, Sarah Bridle¹⁰, Renata Bertazzi Levy¹¹, Fernanda Rauber¹¹, Jacqueline Tereza da Silva¹⁰, Ulbe Bosma¹²

Affiliations

¹ KNAW Humanities Cluster, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
² Centre for Food Policy, City, University of London, London, United Kingdom.
³ Natural Language Processing Group, Department of Computer Science, The University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom.
⁴ Department of Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway.
⁵ Meertens Institute (KNAW), Amsterdam, Netherlands.
⁶ National Institute of Informatics, Chiyoda-ku, Japan.
⁷ Department of Mathematics and Statistics, College of Arts and Sciences, University of South Florida, St. Petersburg, FL, United States.
⁸ Equitable Development and Resilience Research Group, Institute of Energy Futures, College of Engineering, Design and Physical Science, Brunel University London, Uxbridge, United Kingdom.
⁹ Text Mining Solutions Ltd., York, United Kingdom.
¹⁰ Department of Physics & Astronomy, Faculty of Science and Engineering, The University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom.
¹¹ University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.
¹² International Institute of Social History (KNAW), Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss the use of natural language processing and artificial intelligence to analyze nutritional and sustainability aspects of recipes and food. We present the state-of-the-art and some use cases, followed by a discussion of challenges. Our perspective on addressing these is that while they typically have a technical nature, they nevertheless require an interdisciplinary approach combining natural language processing and artificial intelligence with expert domain knowledge to create practical tools and comprehensive analysis for the food domain.

Keywords: computational recipe analysis; food computing; food history; food science; interdisciplinary; natural language processing; recommender systems; semantic web.

Copyright © 2021 van Erp, Reynolds, Maynard, Starke, Ibáñez Martín, Andres, Leite, Alvarez de Toledo, Schmidt Rivera, Trattner, Brewer, Adriano Martins, Kluczkovski, Frankowska, Bridle, Levy, Rauber, Tereza da Silva and Bosma.