The document discusses recommending balanced dinners to meet calorie and nutritional goals. It details the calorie and nutrient content of foods eaten during the day and the target for dinner. The author analyzes USDA dinner composition data using natural language processing to learn common dinner combinations and provide balanced cuisine recommendations for filling nutritional needs at dinner.

1. June 20, 2014
What’s For Dinner
Christopher Klein
Recommending dinners to fit your nutritional goals

2. Calorie Counting
Would like to recommended a dinner to meet calorie goals
Food Calories Carbs Fat Protein Sugar Fiber
Breakfast Oatmeal 100 19 2 4 0 3
Milk (1%) 110 13 3 9 12 0
! Banana 110 29 0 1 15 3
Lunch PB&J 300 44 14 12 16 4
Diet Cola 0 0 0 0 0 0
Brownie 410 56 19 0 43 2
“Free Donut” 350 35 19 4 14 2
Sum 1380 196 57 30 100 14
Goal 2500 305 80 120 90 45
Dinner
Target
1120 109 23 90 -10 31

3. Calorie Counting
✤ Problem solution is naively simple!
✤ Filling a knapsack!
✤ Naive solution leads to awkward dinners!
✤ Haddock and pancakes with marshmallows!
✤ Solution: learn natural dinner compositions from data

4. Data Sources and Methods
✤ USDA (10 yrs of survey data)!
✤ 31,261 recorded dinners!
✤ USDA Food and Nutrient DB for Dietary Studies!
✤ 9,537 food listings!
✤ Feed dinner descriptions into word2vec to discover
pairings and clusters (cuisine types)

5. Breakfast
for Dinner
Italian
+ Salad
Seafood
Asian
Mexican
American
Southern
Classic
American
Dessert
+ Liquor

6. Insights
✤ Americans really love potatoes (french fries), soda, and
cheese with dinner (to detrimental health)!
✤ Average American dinner is high in fat, low in carbs!
✤ Italian + Salad and American Southern cuisines provide
the most balanced dinners!
✤ Kidney beans pair with every cuisine except Asian!
✤ Asian and Mexican cuisine is very cliquish

7. Christopher Klein