Innovation is good, responsible innovation is great

By Thresher Editorial Board     10/1/24 10:49pm

Those sitting in their college commons last Tuesday may have watched between two and twenty minutes of an ad promoting the student-developed food-tracking app Diagnos. We’re glad Diagnos provides that nutritional data — absent from servery menus —  for free. However, we encourage the developers of Diagnos and other app developers, especially those that involve artificial intelligence, to address ethical concerns and user-test these apps prior to launch. 

Diagnos’ AI-based image recognition to identify the calories and nutritional information of food is promising. Students deserve to know what they’re eating, and serveries don’t provide nutritional information, despite other universities doing so. Integrating servery menus and allergen warnings into the app is a great step forward.

However, we’re concerned that Diagnos was rolled out prior to implementing recommendations to mitigate disordered eating practices from the Houston Eating Recovery Center. Diagnos is “working on” creating toggles for users to remove calorie and weight trackers, but those toggles are currently unavailable. 

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13.5 percent of female college students and 3.6 percent of male college students had an eating disorder in 2007, and eating disorder risk among American college students has increased 13 percent from 2013 to 2020. College students are particularly at risk for developing an eating disorder. 

Nobody is forced to download the app — but still, know your audience. This risk should have been taken into account early in the development process and been fully addressed prior to launch.

Also worrying is the presentation of the Healthy Eating Index, which the app says is based on the United States Department of Food and Agriculture dietary guidelines for Americans. Users’ HEI is displayed in the app on a scale of zero to 100. Scores below 10 are considered “horrible,” scores around 50 are “moderate” and scores of 90 and above proclaim the user a “diet king.” 

The HEI itself is not a problem. It’s an improvement over other food trackers such as MyFitnessPal that do not track micronutrient intake as prominently. The effort to convert a numeric score to colloquial terms is admirable, but telling a user their diet is “horrible” or “diet king” feels unscientific at best and callous at worst. Making students feel bad about what they put on their plates risks worsening the already heavy stigma around eating disorders. 

Lastly, we doubt the accuracy of AI image recognition and barcode scanning. For instance, how does Diagnos know whether a user is eating brown or white rice under dubious servery lighting, or how much cheese sits under the turkey on a sandwich? To be fair, the developers recommend separating food on the plate when taking pictures, but this tip is not shown in the app. Even if users diligently separate out their food, the promised 78% accuracy rate is not disclosed in the app and is a large margin of error for those trying to change their weight or hit specific macronutrient goals.

The barcode scanning also needs some work — scanning the barcode on a box of Cheez-Its brings up nutritional information for over 4,000 calories worth of food, with no visible way to change the portion size or delete food entries after saving. And even for the entire box, Diagnos’ nutritional calculations are inaccurate: A 12.4 ounce box of Cheez-Its, at 12 portions of 150 calories each, should total 1,800 calories and 204 grams of carbs, a far cry from the 4,139 calories and 462 grams of carbs quoted.

There are elements of Diagnos that are praiseworthy. We commend them for developing an entirely free app with innovative features, such as AI image recognition a crucial nutritional information. However, when apps tackle a sensitive topic, ethical concerns and usability issues should be ironed out prior to launch. At the very least, apps still in early stages should be marketed as “beta” versions. We have great student innovations — let’s ensure those innovations stay responsible.

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