AllerGen.ai

Overview

Our mission is to alleviate the health burden of allergies by enabling users to better understand how certain meals were prepared. In order to do so, we created an interface that allows people to determine potential allergens in dishes through ingredient generation via GPT 3.5, followed by ingredient to allergen classification.

Background

Food has always been a central part of every community, not simply for survival but also as a means of preserving culture and expressing ourselves. Recipes have been passed down from prior generations, shared between cultures, and mutated to reflect resource availability and changing dietary restrictions. While access to different cuisines has never been easier, it brings about challenges for people with allergens and restrictive diets who may be unfamiliar with the preparation of certain meals.

According to McKinsey, half a billion people around the world including 85 million in the U.S. are allergic to certain ingredients. Pew Research Center reported that 54% of Americans now pay more attention to eating healthy compared with 20 years ago (Almeida).

AllerGen.ai aims to create a safer and more dining experience by alleviating the health burden of allergies faced by 85 million Americans. We created an interface that provides predicted ingredients, specific products, and brands that correspond to the predicted ingredients, and corresponding allergens given a user-specified dish. Our solution performs ingredient generation via GPT 3.5 and ingredient-to-allergen classification in order to highlight the potential allergens present in products that may be used to create the dish.

The target users for our MVP are Americans with food allergies or caring for people with food allergies. We aim to contribute to food allergy awareness by answering users' questions such as knowing the ingredients contained in a dish, potential products associated with the ingredients, and the allergens present.

‍Impact

1. By highlighting allergens in ingredients, individuals with food allergies can make informed choices and avoid potential health risks.
2. Individuals can gain confidence in using specific products for their recipes given the knowledge of allergen information associated with specific products and brands.

‍Market Opportunity

The global food allergy market is growing as more people become aware of their allergies and seek products and services that cater to their needs. Providing allergen information for potential products used in recipes could attract this niche market. Our unique web app allows users to input their preferred dish name to detect ingredients, products, and brands while flagging potential allergens.

Product Key Features

• Takes dish name as the input to predict ingredients present
• Generates available products/brands and allergens present per dish

Key Differentiators

• Analyzes 14 allergens instead of 9
• Include brand and product-specific information
• Hand-crafted allergen reference table
• Uses GPT 3.5 to predict likely ingredients