TweetWhatYouEat helps students track their daily food choices

By Carly Kuppe
Western Herald

Western Michigan University students can use TweetWhatYouEat.com to track what they eat on a daily basis.
TweetWhatYouEat (TWYE) uses Twitter technology that allows users to track what they are eating at any given moment through instant message programs, text messaging and Web site capability.

“Twitter makes it easy to see what people are eating in context of their life,” TWYE Founder and Lead Developer Alex Ressi said.  “It helps you to change your eating habits.”

TWYE aims to provide valuable features that make it the simplest food diary users will ever keep.

“The idea of Twitter is that you update a group of followers about what’s going on in your life,” Ressi said.  “The neat thing will be taking feed of what’s going on in your life and integrating it into what you’re eating.”
“TWYE uses a database called CrowdCal that has different food and drink items stored along with calorie counts for all of them,” Ressi said.  “Users can enter in different items they’ve consumed, and the database will figure out the rest.”

For example, a user could tell their TWYE account they’ve consumed a banana as well as the calorie count for that item.  If they leave the calorie count blank, the CrowdCal database would automatically figure out the calorie count for the user from the pre-existing data.

Ressi acknowledged that he came up with the idea of TWYE last January to help him lose weight for his wedding.

“I needed a tool that would be simple to use allowing me to track the foods that I was eating to make changes to my diet,” Ressi said.

Now, the Web site has grown to nearly 2,700 users, and close to 75 percent are active users.

Ressi plans to develop some new features of TWYE in the future.  One feature would include the option for users to categorize food into different groups like breakfast, lunch and dinner.

If users choose to categorize their food into different groups, TWYE can suggest lower calorie options in the same category.

“The more granular the categories are, the better the suggestions become,” Ressi said.

“TweetWhatYouEat builds awareness,” Ressi said.  “Once you can make that connection [between personal habits and eating patterns], you can then begin to change your behavior.”

Short URL: http://www.westernherald.com/?p=3100

Posted by HeraldAdmin on Jan 12 2009. Filed under Campus, Nation, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

Cody Kimball
Web Manager: I'm a Communication Student at WMU, a SCUBA Diver, Boater, Ordained Minister, Notary Public, Web Designer, Film Maker, DJ, and of course a Journalist. Born and raised in Port Huron, MI and a graduate of SC4. http://www.codykimball.com