Homemade Recommender System

Homemade is a fully operational iOS Application and useful network that brings people together through the food they create and the friends they make. On our team, we believe that food provides people with one of the most intimate forms of connection and we sought to create an environment where people can have fun while nourishing that connection.

In America, the top two leading causes of death are heart disease and cancer, with diabetes just a few spots behind. In the past 20 years, overwhelming medical research has shown a strong association between poor lifestyle-diet and these diseases. It’s also worth considering that on average, unhealthy diets are the least environmentally sustainable. Needless to say, in a world with a growing climate change problem and a rapidly expanding agricultural sector that ranks second in global greenhouse gas emissions, it’s important to think about what we eat. 

With that in mind, our team spent the past semester developing a recommender system for the Homemade application which suggests recipes and meal plans that are in accordance with a user’s recent historical preferences, while also offering suggestions for users to gradually improve their diets over time. Our mission is to show our users that creating new food can be fun, delicious, and bring people together, while simultaneously lowering our users’ carbon footprint and risk of heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and other conditions.