Nutrify Goes to School (V1) 📸 -> 🍌 @ 🏫
7 Nov 2024 - Author: Daniel Bourke (Co-Founder)
Josh and I presenting Nutrify as well as the health benefits of whole foods in front of a class of 25 year 1s and 2s at a local school.
An exciting day for Nutrify today!
We had our first whole food education session at a local Brisbane school.
And it turns out... the kids loved it!
Joshua Bourke and I went to the local markets and collected a basket of various whole foods.
Bananas, sweet potato, apples, avocado, and the less common (but still in Nutrify), artichoke and galangal.
We ran two 30 minute sessions with groups of year 1 and 2s (six and seven year olds).
To make it interactive we invited students one by one and eventually in groups of two to choose a food from the basket and hold it up in front of the class to see what it was.
Once the students identified the foods, we also asked them to rate them on a scale of 0 to 5.
Where:
- 0 = most processed (e.g. soda/pop tarts)
- 5 = whole foods/single ingredient foods (e.g. fruits/vegetables)
Students immediately understood this scale, rating every fruit/vegetable 5 points and the processed foods we brought along as 0 points.
So where did Nutrify come in?
To add another level of interactivity, we asked students to take a photo of the foods with an iPad running Nutrify.
Using computer vision models (on-device, no internet connection required - important for schools & privacy), Nutrify identified each whole food instantly and provided nutrition information in a colourful and easy-to-understand manner.
An example of Nutrify For Schools running on iPad. Thanks to on-device machine learning models, the app works offline and does not require an internet connection. Nutrify For Schools comes pre-loaded with 500+ foods to create an interactive whole food learning opportunity.
One student yelled out “This is like Pokémon for foods!”
Our goal at Nutrify is to incentivise people, especially kids, to eat more whole foods, foods that don't need a barcode or long lists of ingredients.
The rating scale seems to have worked too.
When we asked the kids, “If you were designing a healthy plate, what scores would you like most of?”
They all yelled out “5!!!!”
And I couldn't help but smile and laugh.
Some of the feedback:
“Are you coming back?” asked a student.
“Would you like us to come back?” We replied.
“Yes!”
And from a teacher watching from another classroom:
“This is a must on every iPad...”
We're biased, but we agree!
So if you'd like to see Nutrify at your local school, please let us know, we'd love to show it off.
Or if you're involved in the school system and know how we might make Nutrify more tailored to the curriculum so we can expand to more schools, please reach out, we'd love your advice.
Our dream is to make Nutrify available on every iPad in every school and for it to be the go to place for fun, interactive food education.
Josh and I standing out the front of a local school (about 300m from Nutrify HQ) after presenting Nutrify as well a range of different whole foods to students.
Reviews
Here's what the teachers had to say:
Nutrify provided an engaging incursion at our school which opened our students' eyes to the exciting world of health and whole foods. Students were provided with hands-on experiences as they explored the app and learnt about the design process that led to its creation. Dan and Josh’s passion for educating children about the importance of fuelling their body with healthy and nutritious foods had all the children wanting to learn more.
The Nutrify App Team did an amazing job engaging our Early Years class with their fun and interactive session on nutrition! The kids absolutely loved the hands-on activities using the app and were inspired to make healthier choices every day.
Questions, suggestions and feedback
Have any questions about this update, suggestions for future updates or ideas for what foods we should add next?
Feel free to reach out to us at [email protected] (Daniel or Josh will reply)!
- Download Nutrify on the App Store
- Nutrify Homepage
- @nutrifyfoodapp on Instagram/TikTok/X
Credit roll
- Nutrition data is curated and FoodVision AI computer vision models are trained by Daniel Bourke.
- All iOS interfaces are designed and built by Joshua Bourke.
- Food image data is collected and labelled by Joseph Drury, Samuel Bourke and Daniel Bourke.
- Food icons are designed and created by Grace Lee.