Using Crowdsourced Food Image Data for Assessing Restaurant Nutrition Environment: A Validation Study.

Crowdsourced online food images, when combined with food image recognition technologies, have the potential to offer a cost-effective and scalable solution for the assessment of the restaurant nutrition environment. While previous research has explored this approach and validated the accuracy of food image recognition technologies, much remains unknown about the validity of crowdsourced food images as the primary data source for large-scale assessments. In this paper, we collect data from multiple sources and comprehensively examine the validity of using crowdsourced food images for assessing the restaurant nutrition environment in the Greater Hartford region.