Google is developing tech that counts the calories in your Instagram food pics

While those who habitually style, shoot then ‘share’ their food before they tuck in probably aren’t the same people who fascinate over the calorific content of everything they eat; Google’s latest project plans to make them one and the same.

Google is working on a new artificial intelligence called Im2Calories that will use “sophisticated deep learning algorithms” to analyse a still photograph of food and detect how many calories are on the plate.

Kevin Murphy, a researcher at Google believes that the ability to scan your food with a smart phone camera is already high in demand and that the technology will be beneficial to users even if it’s not absolutely perfect. Consumers want to know the average number of calories over a period of time rather than particular meals, so Murphy believes Google’s algorithm can afford to miss the exact number by 20%.

If you were impressed by facial recognition technology, accurately identifying the calories in different foodstuffs is next level in complexity. The future of food is an exciting prospect and technology will no doubt play a large part in it. Bistro In Vitro is another new project that aims to introduce the possibilities that lab grown meat may offer in the future.