AI chatbots provide deficient diet plans to teenagers, study finds
A study by researchers at Turkish universities found that AI chatbots including ChatGPT, Gemini, Bing Chat, Claude and Perplexity underestimated teenagers' daily calorie and nutrient needs by approximately 700 calories on average when generating meal plans. The deficient plans could impair normal growth and metabolic health if followed long-term, according to the research published in Frontiers in Nutrition.
What happened
Researchers at Istanbul Technical University, Ankara University, Gazi University, and Artvin Çoruh University in Turkey tested five AI chatbots—ChatGPT, Gemini, Bing Chat, Claude, and Perplexity—by asking them to create meal plans for 15-year-old teenagers.
The researchers compared the AI-generated plans to meal plans created by nutrition specialists and found significant deficiencies in the AI output.
Reported impact
The AI systems underestimated daily energy needs by approximately 700 calories on average, equivalent in some cases to skipping an entire meal daily.
The meal plans often lacked adequate quantities of calories and essential nutrients compared to plans developed according to scientific guidelines by nutrition specialists. Following such unbalanced or overly restrictive diets during adolescence could have negative long-term effects on growth and metabolic health.
Index analysis
Dr. Aisha Batool Bellin, one of the study authors published in Frontiers in Nutrition, stated that results revealed a clear gap between plans produced by AI models and those created by nutrition specialists.
The study found that AI-designed dietary systems tend to significantly underestimate total energy and essential nutrients compared to scientifically-guided systems prepared by nutrition specialists.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.