Food logging from images

A system for recognizing meals, comprising:

• a general purpose computing device;
• and
• a computer program comprising program modules executable by the computing device, wherein the computing device is directed by the program modules of the computer program to:
• provide one or more machine-learned meal models trained on combinations of image features extracted from one or more sets of training images of representative meals and nutritional information corresponding to the representative meals;
• acquire a single meal image in which one or more food items are visible and one or more other food items are occluded;
• extract a plurality of image features from the meal image;
• recognize the visible food items and one or more of the occluded food items by applying one or more of the machine-learned meal models to the image features extracted from the meal image;
• generate one or more interactive messages in response to one or more of the recognized food items;
• and
• present one or more of the interactive messages via a user interface.

A computer storage device having computer executable instructions stored therein for recognizing meals from images of those meals, said instructions causing a computing device to execute a method comprising:

• receive a machine-learned meal model trained on combinations of one or more sets of training images of representative meals and sources associated with one or more of the representative meals;
• acquire a single current meal image of a meal comprising a plurality of food items;
• wherein one or more of the food items are visible in the current meal image and one or more other food items are fully occluded in the current meal image;
• receive information representing a source of a meal corresponding to the current meal image;
• recognize the visible food items and at least one of the occluded food items from the current meal image by evaluating the current meal image using the machine-learned meal model as constrained based on the source of the meal;
• and
• present one or more interactive messages automatically generated based on the recognized visible food items and the recognized occluded food items.