How AI-powered apps can enhance your mealtimes

 

Use up those leftovers

Apps such as SuperCook and Cookup will ask you to enter a list of the ingredients that you have to hand – whether in the fridge, in the cupboard or ‘on the side’ – and then use that list to come up with recipe ideas. The great thing here is that you can use that leftover pasta from two nights ago, or the slices of ham and cheese cluttering up your fridge shelves. Mind you, there’s only so much you can do if you haven’t been shopping for a while: if you’re a student (or very rich person) and only have half a jar of mayonnaise and a tin of sardines in the house, even AI can’t help you.

Shopping list generators

Judging by the number of apps with ‘shopping’ and ‘grocery’ in their names, asking AI to put together a shopping list is very popular. This makes sense, as planning a supermarket trip isn’t usually a whole lot of fun. Fortunately, Shopping List Maker, GroceryAI and many other tools exist that claim to take the faff out of food shopping, although to make them work efficiently you’ll need to tell them exactly what you’ve already got. That could be time-consuming if, like us, you’ve got jars of dried oregano from 2009 hanging about at the back of the cupboard.

Recipe ideas

Can’t think of anything to cook? ChefGPT (yes, very good) and Apple’s Recipe Generator are there to help. They’ll work on a list of your culinary likes and dislikes, consider how many people you’re cooking for, add options such as how much time you have available for preparation – and (hopefully) suggest something to pique the old taste buds. If you’ve been resorting to tried-and-trusted meal solutions like spaghetti and tomato sauce a bit too much lately, as we all do at times, give one or more of these tools a whirl. All new ideas are useful ideas, right?

AI calorie counters

SnapCalorie, Calorie Mama and the curiously named ParrotPal will help you out if you’re keen to track your calorific intake, either by working out the energy from a list of ingredients that you enter, or from a photo of a given foodstuff or meal portion. The latter option is obviously easier, although the app can only estimate the approximate weight of your food rather than measure it exactly, so it might be best to regard the calorie numbers as ballpark figures. You could cheat the app by hiding a Toblerone under the lettuce leaf that you’re photographing, but we don’t advise it.

Smart fridges

If your domestic cooking needs are large-scale and complex, you might want to consider investing in a smart fridge, so called because it has an AI-powered app in its CPU which will track the quantity of the items you store in it. Some models also learn your usage patterns to help optimise cooling performance. The top-of-the-line fridges (we’ve seen a Samsung that costs a wallet-weakening £5,000) will warn you when a particular foodstuff that you use frequently is about to run out. We’re not saying that smart fridges are essential for everyone, especially if you only eat beans on toast, but we can imagine large, hungry families benefitting from them, for sure.

Manage expiry dates

Save money and be kind to the environment by asking apps such as AI Fridge and Fridgely to keep track of the freshness (or lack thereof) of your perishable goods. We’ve all looked at the ‘best by’, ‘sell by’ and ‘use by’ dates on a pack of eggs and wondered if they’ll give us salmonella because they’re a couple of days out of date, haven’t we? And don’t even start us on that carton of milk which tastes okay but which smells a bit ripe… If an app can tell you how long a product is safe to consume, that will help you make an informed decision about whether to eat it or chuck it.

Wine pairing suggestions

You may be content to drink a random white wine with fish and a random red with lamb. Many of us never need to go deeper than that with our wine choices, but if you do feel the urge to complement your food with a more precisely matched vino, apps such as WineGPT (yep) and Pocket Sommelier will take the hassle out of the task. This is where generative AI truly comes into its own: as there are over 10,000 wine varieties on the planet in six main categories (thanks, Google), the task of matching the exact one to your chosen meal would be virtually impossible if you tried it unassisted.

Figure out portion sizes

Portions Master is, as its name suggests, designed to help you align your meal quantity with your fitness and nutrition goals, a more complex task than you might imagine if you’ve never had to think about this. Are you a sedentary or active person? Do you prefer toast or eggs for breakfast? Is someone about to bake a massive chocolate cake for your birthday? Should you pour that third glass of Merlot? All these questions and many more will enable the AI to check existing nutrition data and recommend how much of various food groups you can consume to stay healthy and energetic.

Recreate a meal

You’ve been out for dinner and, having eaten the tastiest pie, pasta or pudding ever, have resolved to make the same dish at home (but for a quarter of the price, naturally). Assuming you’re too polite to march into the restaurant kitchen and demand the recipe from the chef, you’ll need an AI-fuelled app to help you recreate the yummy grub. Sidechef is just one tool that claims to enable you to do this, using machine learning to analyse the pics you took of the food. It will then tell you which ingredients to buy and how to combine them. Mind you, real-life chefs probably don’t approve of this.

Meal plans for fitness

Nutrition AI, TrainAI and the irritatingly spelled StrongrFastr and Eatr are just four AI-powered apps that help you plan meals that aren’t just tasty but which will also help you with your fitness goals. It will help if you know how many grams of protein, carbohydrates and other food groups you need per day to achieve your targets, but it’s not essential because some of the more advanced apps will advise you of these quantities based on your physical stats. Usefully, a lot of these also overlap and integrate with the many, many fitness-training apps already out there.

Allergy detectors

Allergy awareness is a serious business that can save lives, so if you choose to check your food for potential allergens with an AI-powered app, check that the one you use is current, trustworthy and backed with medical expertise. The current range of apps generally work from a list of food ingredients, warning you if anything on the list is likely to be a potential risk, while the next wave of apps look likely to be in the form of a wearable device that ‘tastes’ your food and checks the results against existing data. Consult a medical professional if you have any doubts whatsoever.

Photographic meal recognition

SnapCalorie and the everpresent Google Lens will help you identify what you’ve just eaten, a useful tool if you want to remember the meal for a future visit, to figure out a mystery ingredient in it, or just because you have no idea what the dish is even though it tastes great (believe us, this happens). You may find this especially useful if you’re eating a plate of bánh xèo in remotest Vietnam, a bowl of efo riro in rural Nigeria, or something yellow and gelatinous that your grandad has just cooked for you “because we used to like it in the war.”