Infos for Students

Topics for Bachelor's or Master's theses

• Evaluation of the recent Food-based Dietary Guidelines published by the German Nutrition Society in 2024 (currently in progress)
  The German Nutrition Society (DGE) considers its food-based dietary guidelines (FBDGs) as an important tool to foster the adoption of healthy eating behaviours. The latest version of the German FBDGs was published in March 2024. Their development was based on an innovative mathematical approach, not just taking into account nutrient intake recommendations, but also national dietary habits, health-associations of the consumption of certain foods (i.e., food-related DALYs), and sustainability aspects such as greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) and agricultural land use (LA).
  The aim of this project is to compare the methodological approach and the outcomes of these FBGDs with other national guidelines and to evaluate them with respect to the uncertainty of the underlying data (e.g., food composition, DALYs, GHGE, LA) and the affordability of the recommended foods.
   
• Effectiveness of individual pieces of personalized nutrition advice in the Food4Me study
  Food4Me has been one of the largest studies focusing on the effect of personalized nutrition (PN) advice on individuals' dietary behavior. It was shown that PN produced larger and more appropriate changes in dietary behavior than a conventional approach. The respective effect size, however, was quite small.
  Therefore, the aim of this project is to investigate the effectiveness of the individual pieces of PN advice given to the subjects and to identify those recommendations that produced the most substantial and appropriate changes in the subjects' dietary behavior.
   
• Overview of algorithms in Personalized Nutrition 
  Personalized Nutrition (PN) uses a subject's individual information to produce tailored dietary recommendations. In other terms, PN uses input data, feeds them into an algorithm, and obtains output data (i.e. personalized dietary recommendations). Examples of such algorithms are linear or quadratic programming, fuzzy optimizations, decision trees, or modern approaches of machine learning. 
  The aim of the project is to provide an overview of algorithms actually used for PN, be it in a scientific contest or in commercial applications. 
   
• Food-based Dietary Guidelines from a consumer perspective
  Food-based Dietary Guidelines (FBDGs) are published to support healthy (and environment-friendly) food choices in a population. They are developed in the tug of war between desirability from a health and sustainability perspective and acceptability as well as feasibility from a consumer perspective. 
  Therefore, the aim of the project is to shed light on the question of how FBDGs should be designed such that consumers consider them convincing and feasible and are motivated to follow them.
   
• Entwicklung eines Index zur Bewertung der Ernährungsqualität von Kunden und Kundinnen der Tafel anhand der FBDGs (Completed, winter 2025)
• Evaluation von KI-generierten vs. wissenschaftlichen Forschungsarbeiten auf Basis der NHANES-Studie (Completed, winter 2025)
• Consumers' Perceived Barriers and Motivations to Follow Denmark’s Official Dietary Guidelines: A Comparison of Consumers Following vs. Not Following the Guidelines and Sociodemographic Differences (Completed, autumn 2025)
• The potential of ChatGPT as a dietary assessment tool for children and adolescents: An analysis of validity and reproducibility using dietary data from the KiGGS Wave II study (Completed, summer 2025)
• Harnessing the Potential of Chickpeas and Peas: A Path towards Sustainable Food Systems in Europe (Completed, summer 2025)
• RoboDiabetic –  Eine Evaluation der Validität und Konsistenz von ChatGPT-Ernährungsempfehlungen für das Selbstmanagement bei Typ-2-Diabetes (Completed, summer 2025)
• ChatGPT told me it's healthy: How can artificial intelligence improve dietary assessment? Opportunities, challenges and limitations (Completed, spring 2025)
• Consumer Attitudes towards recommendations given in sustainable food-based dietary guidelines (Completed, spring 2025)
• Validity and Reproducibility of Dietary Assessment through Image Processing with ChatGPT and MyFitnessPal (Completed, spring 2025)
• Untersuchung der Ernährung von Seniorinnen und Senioren in Bayern anhand der III. Bayerischen Verzehrsstudie (Completed, winter 2024)
• Postprandiale Glukosereaktion - Untersuchung von Einflussfaktoren anhand der Food & You DE Studie (Completed, winter 2024)
• The validity and reproducibility of dietary advice, given by Artificial Intelligence, during pregnancy (Completed, winter 2024)
• Evaluation of nutrition-related measures for workplace health promotion (Completed, summer 2024)
• Ultra-processed foods – Impact on obesity and cardiovascular diseases and implications for food-based dietary guidelines (Completed, summer 2024)
• Assessment of Adults' Food Consumption in Bavaria by Means of Quadratic Programming (Completed, summer 2024)
• The impact of the European Union's approval of entomophagy on the intention of young Nigerians to consume edible insects (Completed, summer 2024)
• Climate impact of Bavarian diets: Underlying food consumption patterns and the role of sociodemographic factors, subjective environmental awareness and eating motives (Completed, spring 2024)
• Influence of social media on the development of obesity and corresponding approaches for prevention and intervention (Completed, winter 2023/24)
• Validation of the use of ChatGPT as a source of reliable nutrition advice for healthy individuals (Completed, winter 2023/24)
• Association of habitual dietary intake with parameters of skeletal muscle area and fat derived by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) A narrative review of sources of bias in nutritional epidemiology studies, and original data analysis (Completed, winter 2023/24)
• Personalized dietary recommendations for obese individuals – A comparison of ChatGPT and the Food4Me algorithm (Completed, winter 2023/24)
• Non-compliance of controls in unblinded dietary intervention studies (Completed, spring 2023)
• Verwendung von Nahrungsergänzungsmitteln in der dritten Bayerischen Verzehrsstudie (2021-2023) (Completed, spring 2023)
• Algorithmen zur Entwicklung lebensmittelbezogener Ernährungsempfehlungen. Überblick und Anwendungsbeispiele (Completed, spring 2023)
• Qualitative assessment of mobile nutrition apps by undergraduate students enrolled for "Life Sciences – Ernährungswissenschaft" (Completed, spring 2023)
• Information requirements for efficient personalized nutrition advice (Completed, autumn 2022)
• Food reformulation: Strategies and evidence (Completed, summer 2022)
• Strengths and weaknesses of photo-based dietary assessment tools (Completed, spring 2022)
• Integration of Behaviour Change Techniques within nutrition-related mobile apps (Completed, summer 2021)
• Impact of food choices on sustainability aspects of diets (Completed, spring 2021)
• Trends in energy intakes over the previous decades (Completed, winter 2021/22)
• Comparison of the nutritional situation in EC Member States based on FAO's Food Balance Sheets (Completed, winter 2021/22)
• Transformation of the results from an online FFQ into optimal user feedback (Completed, winter 2021/22)
• Nutritional situation in Colombia with special focus on the consequences of the flow of refugees from Venezuela (Completed, summer 2020)
• Development of recruiting strategies for an app-based dietary survey among Elderly (Completed, summer 2020)
• Assessment of the nutritional quality of snack bars in the German market based on a nutrient profiling approach (Completed, summer 2020)