Fitness enthusiasts can find suitable applications aplenty all over the internet, with different routines and exercises suited for all kinds of body types. However, fixing the right diet plan is always a tricky situation, especially if you are not formally exercising due to the lack of time. For most people, their diet is only a combination of what their peers and other enthusiasts recommend to be eating, without missing out on the necessary nutrients in proteins and carbohydrates, among others. California-based Purple Teal has changed the game in the fitness application space, with a unique way to get people to eat right, whether they are fitness freaks or not. The mobile health service provider, as Chief Knowledge Officer, Anand Subra likes to call it, with its year-old Tweak & Eat application provides meal requirement advice from certified nutritionists from around the globe.
Changing eating habits
Interestingly, the application uses a futuristic approach with Artificial Intelligence at the core of its process and we were instantly amazed by the use of this new technology at least in the food and fitnees space, and couldn’t help but how the idea for it came about. “We realised that there was a lot of effort required to use other apps and after we did some research realised that people did not only need succinct information and actionable instructions but also some hand-holding as to what they needed to eat, “ says Anand to simply the use of the application. Anand adds, “We also realised that while other apps are recording and analysing every morsel eaten by the user, they are not not motivating any changes in behaviour”.
Tweak & Eat, on the other hand, simply requires users to click a picture while they are eating their food and send it on the app to get how much they should be eating of the food, rather than giving a post-meal record. By entering certain body and health parameters, the app constantly works towards learning the preferences of the user to help them tweak their meals even more to achieve better results. After which, the role of the Artificial Intelligence called Tweakifay comes into play; it has been trained to recognise a number of foods and will soon be able to play real-time nutritionists, while the human nutritionists will approve the AI’s results, while also helping fine-tune the results and handle exceptions. “As of now, the nutritionists are only available in the day, at regular meal times, but soon they with the help of our constantly evolving AI-interface, the nutrionists will be available 24x7,” Anand tells us.
Tweaking it right
While most users today are on their phones almost all times of the day, they may not be so just before their meal to click pictures of the food, a habit formed by the Instagram generation. So does the app give personalised pre-recommendations then? Anand explains, “The AI will generate personalised diet plans, which will also be aided by the nutritionists, however, it totally depends on the service chosen by the user. But, if the user wants the hand-holding by the nutritionist, they will have to send a picture of every meal they eat to get the best result”. While the team is based out of California, the application was first launched it India, and only recently achieved one clear milestone of tweaking 1,00,000 meals from 3,50,000 users. Incidentally, India is also the leader and is followed by Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Philippines.
Among the many functions on the app, the key features are primarily - My Nutrition (The Trend Is Your Friend), TweakWall, Nutrition Labels, TweTox, Electronic Diet Recorder and even a Recipe Wall! While first one, helps users regularly track their own calorie trends, the TweakWall helps them to connect with other users on the app and even post the tweaks which could help other users. The app will also help set goals for the users to achieve through their meals, while also having TweTox, a short-term detox program to help them after cheat days. However, the app takes it to the next level by not only giving the calorie intake of commonly eaten foods through the recipes, but also lets users order ingredients and DIY kits, which can get delivered to doors around the world, but only for non-perishables. With AI being the core of the app, what can we expect in the near future? “While expanding our user engagement platforms, we are also working on providing premium services for various health conditions and health objectives,” Anand signs off.