AI based food discovery platform for people with food allergies and dietary preferences

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Foodbud is a start-up aiming to provide a simple software tool to search restaurants and specific dishes within the restaurant according to food allergies/preferences/medical dietary restrictions based on **the ingredients used/not used** in each dish.Dining out is a stressful event for people with a food allergy/intolerance/preference as they need to make sure the restaurant can serve a safe meal for them. It requires checking several restaurants' online menus and calling the chosen restaurant before arrival.1-2% of adults and 5-8% of UK children have a food allergy, equating to about **2 million people**. This figure does not include those with food intolerances, which is difficulty digesting certain foods and have an unpleasant physical reaction to them (Food Standards Agency 2016) or those with coeliac disease - at least 1 in 100 people in the UK (NHS website, DEC 2019).Besides that, over 30% of people avoid at least one food group as a lifestyle choice (Future Thinking report, SEP 2019). Public Health England estimates 70% of UK adults want to adopt a healthier lifestyle and according to Sainsbury's research, 25% of Brits will be Vegan by 2025 (Plant Based News SEP 2020).**Foodbud plans to standardize digital menus and other digital products to access food information and empower the consumer with educated decision-making abilities.**Foodbud has already worked in partnerships with Quadram Institute of Biosciences and the University of Bedfordshire (UIB) for joint projects. The 6 months project aims to help Foodbud implement the QIB dataset of over 70,000 ingredients consumed within the UK on the platform, to help people get access to relevant food information.The output of this project will be a market-ready proof-of-concept platform built on a robust database for safe and personalised food consumption in restaurants.