Snapchat Food Scan Finds Recipes Using Snaps Of Ingredients

Snapchat has introduced a new camera-based analysis feature called Food Scan that, as its name suggests, enables users to scan food items using the social media app. As with other camera-based image analysis tools, Food Scan is able to analyze the item in an image — ingredients, in this case — to present related information.

Food Scan is simple: use the Snapchat app to snap an image of a food item that you may have in the fridge, then allow the app to automatically analyze the photo and find a related recipe on Allrecipes. The feature works with more than 1,200 ingredients, according to Snapchat.

The feature could be particularly useful for younger individuals who want to learn to cook at home, but who may feel like the entire process is daunting. Rather than manually searching for recipes that use the ingredients one already has in the fridge and cupboard, Food Scan can analyze the ingredients and automatically find recipes that involve them.

The company says Food Scan is able to sort through more than 4,500 recipes using more than 1,200 ingredients. Beyond that, Food Scan is also able to retrieve Wikipedia links related to the food items in images, offering users more information about ingredients they may be unfamiliar with.

Food Scan is the latest feature added to Snapchat's camera scanning functionality, which is already able to offer information about a wide variety of things you may encounter in life: plants, dog breeds, unknown music, wine, outfits, and even the nutritional information for certain packaged foods. The new Food Scan option is only available to users in the US.