Finally, dietary assessment that participants actually love to use
Traditional dietary assessment is a burden for researchers and participants alike. Food frequency questionnaires rely on faulty memory. Manual food diaries are time-consuming and lead to dropout. And the data you get is often incomplete or inaccurate.
Many research-grade food tracking apps haven't helped either. In academic software projects, developing and maintaining highly usable apps tends to take a back seat to other priorities. The result: tools that work in a pilot study but frustrate participants at scale.
MyFoodRepo is different because it is core to our own research, and we use it heavily ourselves. We've run our own studies with thousands of participants, which made us invest heavily into making the app very easy to use. Participants snap a photo, and state-of-the-art AI does the rest: identifying foods, estimating portions, and calculating nutritional values in seconds. Or they simply type what they ate in plain language. No navigating endless dropdown menus, no clunky search interfaces. We use the same cutting-edge vision and language models that power the world's leading AI applications, continuously updated as the technology advances.
Built by researchers, for researchers
MyFoodRepo was purpose-built for clinical and epidemiological research at EPFL's Digital Epidemiology Lab, refined through years of real-world use in nutritional studies.
Over a dozen research groups across multiple countries now use MyFoodRepo in their studies, from clinical trials at university hospitals to large-scale digital cohorts with over 1,000 participants. The platform has generated hundreds of thousands of annotated meal entries and contributed to peer-reviewed publications in scientific journals.
And for academic research, it's free. We offer MyFoodRepo at no cost to research groups through a collaboration model. If you have specific requirements or prefer a standalone arrangement, paid options are also available. Either way, fill out the form below and we'll find the right setup for your study.
How it works for your study
We create a dedicated, isolated cohort for your research project. As a cohort manager, you get full control:
- Onboard participants in seconds. Generate as many anonymous participation keys as you need and distribute them however works for your protocol.
- Monitor data in real time. Access incoming meal entries through a secure web dashboard as your study progresses.
- Automatic nutritional mapping. The AI recognizes foods and automatically maps them to the closest nutritional entries in your chosen food composition databases, either official databases or your own custom food lists.
- Export whenever you need. Pull your data via API or CSV export at any point during the study, at completion, or later for follow-up analysis.
Privacy without compromise
Participant anonymity isn't an afterthought, it's the architecture. The MyFoodRepo app collects zero personal information from participants: no names, no email addresses, no phone numbers, no location data. We don't know who your participants are, because we neither want to nor need to.
Participants authenticate with a simple key you provide. The system identifies them only by anonymous UUIDs. You maintain the key-to-participant mapping in your own secure systems, keeping identifiable data exactly where it belongs: under your control. This means simpler ethics applications and fewer data protection headaches.
Enterprise-grade security
- GDPR compliant with full documentation available
- EU-hosted infrastructure by default (AWS and Heroku European regions)
- Encrypted data in transit (TLS 1.2+) and at rest
- Two-factor authentication (WebAuthn) required for all cohort collaborators
- Complete audit trail of all access and modifications
Get started with your study
Ready to modernize dietary data collection for your research? Fill out the form below and we'll be in touch to discuss your study requirements and set up your cohort.
