--- title: SRI App Could Count Food Calories With Smartphone Camera Picture description: Brought to you by the same team who developed Apple's Siri, it's still in its developmental phase canonical: https://time.com/53657/this-app-could-let-you-count-calories-by-taking-a-picture-of-your-food/ author: Samantha Grossman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-04-08T17:00:17.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:08:37.951Z og:title: This App Could Let You Count Calories by Taking a Picture of Your Food og:description: Brought to you by the same team who developed Apple's Siri og:url: https://time.com/53657/this-app-could-let-you-count-calories-by-taking-a-picture-of-your-food/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7f1ac4d096c9522c/6986898135ba6f317dc01674/166810673.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3418 og:image:height: 1923 og:image:alt: Smartphone food picture og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: This App Could Let You Count Calories by Taking a Picture of Your Food twitter:description: Brought to you by the same team who developed Apple's Siri twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7f1ac4d096c9522c/6986898135ba6f317dc01674/166810673.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # This App Could Let You Count Calories by Taking a Picture of Your Food by [Samantha Grossman](https://time.com/author/samantha-grossman/) ## Samantha Grossman Apr 8, 2014 5:00 PM UTC  Cake in mobile phone Cake in mobile phoneGetty Images by [Samantha Grossman](https://time.com/author/samantha-grossman/) ## Samantha Grossman Apr 8, 2014 5:00 PM UTC What if taking photos of your food could serve a real purpose besides helping you brag on Instagram and Facebook? [SRI International](http://www.sri.com/), the lab responsible for the technology behind Siri, is developing an app that would let you snap a picture of your food to get an approximate calorie count, Gigaom [reports](http://gigaom.com/2014/04/03/dont-eat-that-sri-built-a-calorie-counting-food-app-that-works-via-a-photo-snap/). It would use image recognition to scan the photo and analyze the different components of your meal. One of the major challenges here is hidden fats like oil and butter, SRI Ventures executive director Dror Oren tells Gigaom. So while you probably can’t get an exact count, you can still get a fairly accurate range. The team is aware, for example, that some of the best (and most caloric) foods — like burritos — have hidden components, so they’re taking that into account as they continue to develop the app. SRI expects the technology to become mainstream in about a year, which gives us all plenty of time to perfect our food-photography skills. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/53657/this-app-could-let-you-count-calories-by-taking-a-picture-of-your-food/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/53657/this-app-could-let-you-count-calories-by-taking-a-picture-of-your-food/"},"headline":"This App Could Let You Count Calories by Taking a Picture of Your Food","datePublished":"2014-04-08T17:00:17.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:08:37.951Z","description":"Brought to you by the same team who developed Apple's Siri, the new app is still in its developmental phase","url":"https://time.com/53657/this-app-could-let-you-count-calories-by-taking-a-picture-of-your-food/","keywords":["Newsfeed","Food & Drink","Food","calories","Nutrition","Technology","apps","Tech"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7f1ac4d096c9522c/6986898135ba6f317dc01674/166810673.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Samantha Grossman","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/samantha-grossman/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt7f1ac4d096c9522c/6986898135ba6f317dc01674/166810673.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Smartphone food picture","caption":"Smartphone food picture","creditText":"Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/53657/this-app-could-let-you-count-calories-by-taking-a-picture-of-your-food/","name":"This App Could Let You Count Calories by Taking a Picture of Your Food"}}]}] ```