Authors
Ismael Alejandro Contreras-Guillén, Sara Leeson, Rocio Victoria Gili, Belén Carlino, Emanuel Irrazabal, Sandaly Oliveira da Silva Pacheco, Fabio Juliano Pacheco
Published in
PloS one. Volume 21. Issue 9. Pages e0359331. Epub Sep 25, 2026.
Abstract
Accurate dietary intake assessment remains challenging, particularly for portion-size estimation, and context-specific photographic aids remain limited in Argentina. This study aimed to develop an open-access digital atlas of foods and recipes consumed in Argentina, integrating portion-size photographs and nutrient-composition data, and to describe its performance for food and recipe retrieval and visual portion-size matching under controlled direct-observation conditions.
The Smart24Food atlas was developed as a digital resource integrating food photographs, standardized recipes, and nutrient-composition information. A controlled direct-observation study in a university setting included 108 participants, mostly young adults, completing 20 tasks: seven packaged-product selection tasks and 13 visual portion-matching tasks. Exact matching was analyzed using cross-classified logistic mixed-effects models, while weight-based performance was assessed using linear mixed-effects models and repeated-measures Bland-Altman analysis.
The atlas contains 3,273 photographs representing 998 distinct foods through 1,052 presentation-specific items, with nutrient-composition information for up to 53 components. Food or recipe retrieval was successful in 99.81% of tasks (2,156/2,160), and overall exact matching was 86.5% (1,869/2,160). Food-level heterogeneity was greater than participant-level heterogeneity, whereas food category and task type were not significantly associated with exact matching. Across 1,404 visual portion-matching observations, mean signed error was -1.34 g (95% CI: -4.68 to 2.00; p = 0.447), with no evidence that signed error varied systematically with served portion weight across the evaluated foods (B=-0.011 g/g; p = 0.703). The 95% Bland-Altman limits of agreement ranged from -33.44 to 30.76 g.
The Smart24Food atlas is an open-access resource integrating photographic portion references with nutrient-composition information for foods and recipes consumed in Argentina. Under controlled direct-observation conditions, participants showed high retrieval and exact-match performance, with no evidence of systematic mean bias in visual portion matching. Further studies in more diverse populations and routine dietary-assessment contexts are needed.
PMID:
42789546
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 26 Sep 2026.
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