Taking Pics of Food Could Help You Lose Weight

There are two types of people in the world – those who roll their eyes at people taking photos of their food and those who look for the perfect light to make their meals look their best on Instagram.

If you’re one of the people who would rather tuck into your dinner than make it look perfectly symmetrical, find the perfect background, snap a picture and then eat it, you might want to jump on the #foodstagram bandwagon.

New research has suggested that those who take photos of their meals and share them on social media do better when it comes to losing weight.

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Scientists at Oregon state University discovered that food photos help to provide valuable and honest insights for dieticians, allowing them to give personalised advice for those trying to track their diet and lose weight.

Researchers had 114 nutrition and dietetics students in Australia and the US look at photos of food in order to identify what was on each plate and how big the serving sizes were. They were able to identify the foods 80 per cent of the time, which could then allow them to create better diet plans.

Mary Cluskey, study author, said: “If you’re providing me with your dietary intake information, you may not be trying to falsify the information because you’re sincerely interested in improving your diet.”

“But I’m depending on your ability to recall what you ate and your ability to correctly tell me what portions and specific ingredients you had – there are all kinds of things that can make it go wrong.”

Pictures – whether you post them on social media or not – help us to remember what we ate, even if we’d quite like to forget the cheeky Chinese takeaway last Friday night. This can mean you remember something as simple as whether you had low-fat dressing on your salad or not.

This won’t just help if you are talking to your GP or a dietician, but snapping your meals and snacks is also a great way for you to keep track of your diet and see where you might break it. Plus, you may find you get a few extra Instagram followers once you learn to expertly filter your spag bol.