Author Archives: Emilie7110

You May Soon Be Able to Calculate How Many Calories Are in Your Food Porn

by Emilie7110 Posted on June 3, 2015

Mother Jones

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Are you the kind of person who relishes publishing over-saturated photos of your dinner onto Instagram? If so, a new project, reportedly being developed by Google, may soon provide you with yet another interactive activity with your food—other than simply eating it.

The Guardian reports the prospective project, coined “Im2Calories,” aims to help users calculate the caloric makeup of food photos. Using an artificial-intelligence technology that would “analyze the depth of pixels in an image” it would then figure out “the size and shape” of our meals by subjecting that analysis to various algorithms. After all that? Voila! That caloric content of those perfectly manicured entrees.

It’s not perfect. Developers say that initially the technology may only be able to correctly measure the calories in a photo 30 percent of the time. But in a recent presentation, Google research scientist Kevin Murphy said that success rate is good enough to attract enough curious users to improve it over time.

Although a spokesperson for Google said the tool is still only in research mode, its potential creation could certainly help people keep tabs on their calorie intake. But is this really effective for losing weight? Research suggests such knowledge does little to impact a person’s food choices.

This might not matter much to Instagram’s crowded food wing, reflected in popular accounts such as You Did Not Eat That and You Wish You Ate This, which is likely to gobble up the calorie counting tool. Just look at the overnight success of Microsoft’s age guessing app. And after all, there is only so much satisfaction the number of likes a perfectly manicured food post can provide a person.

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You May Soon Be Able to Calculate How Many Calories Are in Your Food Porn

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Just living close to Walmart makes you fat

by Emilie7110 Posted on August 15, 2014

Just living close to Walmart makes you fat

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15 Aug 2014 5:34 PM

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New research published in the Journal of Transport & Health offers more evidence to bolster theories we already had: People living in dense, urban environments are far healthier than people living in the ’burbs.

Specifically, according to two engineers at the University of Connecticut and Colorado University, it’s the design of the street grid that makes the biggest difference. The more intersections between streets, the lower the rates of those four American juggernauts: obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease. In other words, the more walkable the city, the better its residents’ health.

According to the report, broad, multi-laned streets, characteristic of suburban sprawl, are linked with higher levels of obesity and diabetes. Same goes for “big box” stores, which are associated with 24.9 percent higher rates of diabetes and 13.7 higher rates of obesity. The reason? Both factors indicate that the neighborhood is less friendly to pedestrians.

From The Atlantic:

68 percent of Americans are overweight or obese, which means that someone you know is overweight or obese. Most people don’t get the CDC’s minimum recommended amount of physical activity. Americans spend more time driving every year. So it is logical to conclude, as [Norman] Garrick and [Wesley] Marshall do in their paper, “The role of the street network and how we put together the bones of our communities should not be overlooked as a potential contributing factor to health outcomes.”

As the great urban-versus-suburban debate continues, it seems high time for city planners — and, oh, the federal government — to actually consider these scary health outcomes.

Oh, and that other thing. The planet.

Source:
Do We Look Fat in These Suburbs?

, The Atlantic.

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Just living close to Walmart makes you fat

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