Creating a World Food Atlas

Abstract

I face a problem multiple times every day: What am I going to eat, how much, and where? Where can I get enjoyable healthy food? We live in a world where latest geo-spatial information of interest around us is available in the palm of our hand in our smart phone with navigational guidance, if needed. However, the most vital life information related to food remains inaccessible. Food is vital for health and enjoyment by people, society, and planet. However, data, information, and knowledge related to food suffer from inaccessibility, disinformation, and ignorance. A dependable, trusted, accessible, and dynamic source of geo-indexed food data providing culinary, nutritional, and environmental characteristics is essential for guiding wholistic food decisions. A good amount of data and knowledge related to food is already available in different silos. All those silos may be assimilated into a World Food Atlas (WFA) and made available to people to use it for designing food-centered applications, including food recommendation. WFA contains information about location of sources for food ingredients, dishes, recipes, and consumption patterns. All this information may become available through ubiquitous maps. WFA will help in making better decisions for personal, societal, and planetary health. We believe that there is an urgent need and technology is ready to make it happen. Since food varies significantly across even shorter distances and food preparations are dependent on local culture and socio-economic conditions, it is important that local people are involved in creating such an atlas. We have started an open-data World Food Atlas project and are inviting participation of all interested people to contribute. We need people from different area to help populate WFA and use it. The project is in its infancy. We are building a global community that will make this happen. We invite you to participate in this exciting project.